Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Intel Doubles Capacity of Likely Flash Successor

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the double-or-nothing dept.

Intel has announced a new technique that allows them to effectively double the storage capacity of a single phase-change memory cell without adding cost to the current fabrication process. "Phase-change memory differs from other solid-state memory technologies such as flash and random-access memory because it doesn't use electrons to store data. Instead, it relies on the material's own arrangement of atoms, known as its physical state. Previously, phase-change memory was designed to take advantage of only two states: one in which atoms are loosely organized (amorphous), and another where they are rigidly structured (crystalline). But in a paper presented at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, researchers illustrated that there are two more distinct states that fall between amorphous and crystalline, and that these states can be used to store data."

5 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Salt shaker please by techpawn · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Intel Doubles Capacity of Likely Flash Successor" this from a site that had a huge Intel logo on it for how many months?

    It's neat tech, but as long as flash keeps getting bigger and cheaper we won't see it's 'Successor' for a while.

    --
    Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
  2. Long time in the lab by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Even when a technology becomes shippable it tends to take quite a while for it to catch on. It is easy to make small lab batches, but reliable low-cost high-volume production takes a lot longer. NAND flash was invented in 1988 but only really got going in around 2003 - 15 years later.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
    1. Re:Long time in the lab by networkBoy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It is easy to make small lab batches I see you don't work in an R&D lab doing PCM...

      Before I left my former job we were working on PCM.
      It was anything but easy to make in small batches in the lab. Our average yield of 100% good die was under 1 die/wafer.
      We had plenty of 50% dice, but very little fully functional ones.
      -nB
      --
      whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
  3. Re:Only Double? by deanlandolt · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's double the number of bits. If you look at the largest value a 16 bit number or a 32 bit number can store, its not "double" in size. When it comes down to it, they're just bits, how you use them is up to you. I suppose that's a lot like saying IPv6 "quadruples" the number of addresses of IPv4 -- you know, 128 bits versus 32 bits. I mean, they're just bits, right?
  4. It will be converted to binary by Skapare · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You can label the now total of 4 states however you like, such as 00/01/10/11 or 0/1/2/3 or A/B/C/D or T/A/C/O. But whatever they are, Intel would need to, at some point, convert this all back to 2 bits with states 0/1 when interfacing with external binary circuits. If they don't know how to do that they are welcome to "Ask Slashdot".

    --
    now we need to go OSS in diesel cars