Flash Memory, the type used in your USB thumb drives, your cellphone, solid state drives, and other storage devices; can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. In other words, you can put data on your device, then delete it, then put something else on it.
Usually, this can be done about 10,000 times before the memory is worn out. Most of us will lose our thumb drives long before that happens.
But when it comes to more critical operations, like a server, it’s a bigger deal. But now, engineers from Macronix, the largest worldwide manufacturer of ROM products, have come up with a way to make memory last for 100 million cycles, and maybe even more. This could be great news for our storage devices. Read the full story here:
Flash Memory Survives 100 Million Cycles- IEEE Spectrum – “In the world of memory chips, flash is king. But it’s not perfect. It wears out after being programmed and erased about 10 000 times…This month, at the 2012 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting, engineers from Macronix plan to report the invention of a self-healing NAND flash memory that survives more than 100 million cycles.”
Of course, this is over-simplifying, but the advance is done using heat. Small bursts of up to, and possibly over, 800 degrees. No word on what it may cost, but they do say it won’t drain your cell phone battery.
Huge news! Hopefully soon all devices including desktops and lower end laptops will use this sort of memory