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Samsung Demos Future Memory Chips

Posted by timothy on from the future-is-tense dept.

Fletcher points to this story in CNET Asia, excerpting "The Korean electronics giant unveiled an 8-gigabit flash memory chip Monday based on the 60-nanometer process, as well as a 2-gigabit DDR DRAM chip based on the 80-nanometer process. Flash chips, which retain data after a host computer is turned off, are used in flash cards and cell phones, while DDR DRAM is used inside PCs."

6 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Gigabit? by agent+dero · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why aren't they using conventional storage standards, RAM, and disk space are all in megabytes (1024 vs 1000 debating aside) saying something is *bit (giga,mega,kilo) implies a rate connectivity doesn't it?

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    1. Re:Gigabit? by GeckoX · · Score: 1, Insightful

      No shit, that's what I was thinking.

      Oh, wow, a 1 GB (not even really) storage card. Whoopdy doo shit. I hope the submitter is the one that is wrong, otherwise sheesh.

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  2. Good stuff, but currently they are prototypes by sczimme · · Score: 5, Insightful


    People tend to get excited about new products like these; in a separate but equally relevant phenomenon, they tend not to RTFA.

    From the article:

    Both chips, however, are prototypes. Companies just began this year to make chips on the 90-nanometer process. (The nanometer measurement refers to average feature sizes on the chips). Eighty-nanometer chips may not come for at least another year, and 65-nanometer chips won't debut until at least the end of 2005.

    In other words, 16GB flash MP3 players will not be available in time for Xmas.

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    I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
  3. Re:Usage as Hard Drives? by StateOfTheUnion · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think that Flash RAM has limitations as to the number of times it can be rewritten . . . the number of possible rewrites is high (10's of thousands or more), but a swapspace in a hard disk would eventually read/write flash RAM into oblivion . . .

  4. Not just MP3's anymore by cermanius · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How about a system that runs the OS off a flash chip, but not just like a handheld. Embed that little flash chip on a Mother Board for the OS and use that to boot the system and keep the system state even after power off.

    Mmmm... instant on computers maybe?

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    "Don't sweat the petty stuff and don't pet the sweaty stuff." -- by an Unknown Wise man.
  5. Re:why is DRAM price not falling like flash? by brucmack · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm wondering if speed may be an issue in this case...

    In the flash memory market, capacity has more of an impact than speed, since the speeds are effectively fixed by the technology you're using the flash memory with. In the DRAM market, however, speed is much more of an issue. I might not need more capacity a year from now, but maybe I'd like to increase the speed of my memory instead.

    I tried finding some data to support this, but to no avail. I do remember buying DDR333 RAM a couple of years ago and having it drop to about half the price half a year later.