World's Thinnest Flash Memory Cell Unveiled

qorkfiend writes "Measuring a scant 20 nanometers across, Infineon AG's new nonvolatile flash memory cell could lead to 32 gigabit flash chips within the next few years. The cell contains a unique structure with a fin for the transistor to avoid nano-scale physical effects and uses 90% less electrons than today's memory to store data."

Comments

Real Solid State Computing

[Jozer99]

Wow, now there might be a practical inexpensive method for solid state servers.

Finally...

[deft]

One can carry both their MP3 AND pron collection.

This one guy I know can finally leave the house. I'll tell him.

Re:Finally...

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, just pre-empted 40 other people's post ideas. The angry mob will arrive any minute.

Increased susceptibility to quantum effects?

[EQ]

90% fewer electrons? Does this mean less resiliency/redundancy in the chip - how vulnerable is this to quantum effects - or simple radiation?

does this mean

[museumpeace]

90% less current and since power is
I-squared R
that REALLY cuts the power dissapation which his the brick wall most silicon vendors now approach?

Re:does this mean

[morcheeba]

The article said 90% less electrons, and true, electrons (or holes) make up current, but that's not what they meant. They said it was 90% less electrons stored in each cell -- This is just a small portion of the total current used in the memory.

An ampere of current is 6.24 * 10^18 electrons/second, so to write at 12 megabits/second (USB speed) would require only 1 billion electrons/second, or 0.173 nanoamps -- the rest of the chip will probably take milliamps and dwarf the actual number of electrons flowing into the cells.

Most of the current is used to combat the capacitance on the bit lines - since the X & Y grid wires are so close to other wires (protected by an insulator, of course), a natural capacitor forms. If you want to change the voltage on these bit lines quickly, the capacitance will demand current. You'll get the current back when you eventually try to remove the voltage, but so far it isn't really worth it to recover this current because, after resistive losses, it's at a slightly less voltage. (there are some cool schemes to pump that current into the next bitline to be accessed, but this happens more with synchronized clocks).

Power is also dissipated by the analog sense amplifiers at the edges of the FLASH memory that convert low-level voltages to more usable digital signals.

Power dissipation is more of a problem for processors & not FLASH memory. FLASH is all about density and cost.

replacement?

[phoric]

How about replacing a hard drive with flash chips for ultra-compact PCs? I know a lot of devices use this and some people boot linux off usb flash keys, but what about a built-in flash HD interface?

Re:replacement?

[databoing]

Well, see, the problem with that is that Flash Memory is great for reads, but writes tend to wear out the chip. Writes require a higher voltage to perform (1.5V compared to 0.2V, I think. That may be wrong, use google) and so use as a replacement HD tends to shorten the lifespan of the device to a few months.

Using a flash memory device as a storeage place for things unlikely to change frequently (bootable linux for troubleshooting, encryption keys, etc) doesn't do much for the wear-and-tear of the memory, though.

Re:replacement?

[m50d]

IIRC it's fine as long as you use a filesystem designed to deal with it, and don't use it for swap, logs etc. For storing your home stuff in it's fine, just have no swap and put /tmp and maybe /var on tmpfs.

This flash is so thin...

[Anonymous Coward]

...it can currently only store '1's. '0's are still too wide to fit.

90% less = 81% lesspower too?

[Transcendent]

Since there is 90% less electrons to move, then there would be 90% less current. Power is I^2R, so (.9I)^2R = 0.81P

Sounds very good for portable devices, although I doubt the power consumption of flash cards was that significant (compared to an LCD with a backlite).

Although, my pen drive does get pretty warm when I'm doing enough reading/writing to it, so maybe there will be a significant benefit.

To get rid of any confusion... bytes v bits

[Atmchicago]

They say 32 gigabit, not gigabyte. So if you divide 32 by 8, that makes for 4 gigabytes. At least, that's the way I understand bit-to-byte conversion.

by 2009 32gb should be the norm anyways

[davidwr]

1GB flash drives are already common, add 3 18-month periods to double 3 times over and we'll be at 8GB=32Gbits.

Unless this hits the market significantly sooner than mid-2009, it will have competition.