Two technologies of "eternal" flash memory
The main problem of modern flash drives and SSD drives based on them is that the life of microcircuits is too short. Despite all the tricks, now one cell can withstand only about 10,000 write-erase cycles. Due to the fragility of the microcircuits, it is impossible to reduce the size of cells and make more capacious memory, because in the production of transistors with a technical process of less than 20 nm, the lifespan of flash memory will generally decrease to critical values.
It is in this direction that the best minds in the R & D centers of the largest companies from the microelectronics industry are now working. This week it became known immediately about two interesting developments.
Engineers from Numonix , a subsidiary of Intel, have proposed to cover the cells the same materials that are used in the manufacture of compact discs, that is, a layered structure of tellurium, germanium and antimony. Theoretically, such a structure, Phase Change Memory (PCM), can reduce the cell size to as much as 5 nm. At the same time, an extremely high lifespan will remain (up to 1 million write-erase cycles), as well as in the 128 MB test module they have already created. This is a hundred times more than with existing technology.
Japanese scientists have come up with an alternative method . They offer to inject something like a “hot swap” mechanism into an existing flash memory, when the failure of individual cells does not affect the operation of the entire module. According to the calculations of the Japanese, the lifetime of the “ferroelectric” NAND module is increased to 100 million cycles, and the process can be reduced to 10 nm.
It is in this direction that the best minds in the R & D centers of the largest companies from the microelectronics industry are now working. This week it became known immediately about two interesting developments.
Engineers from Numonix , a subsidiary of Intel, have proposed to cover the cells the same materials that are used in the manufacture of compact discs, that is, a layered structure of tellurium, germanium and antimony. Theoretically, such a structure, Phase Change Memory (PCM), can reduce the cell size to as much as 5 nm. At the same time, an extremely high lifespan will remain (up to 1 million write-erase cycles), as well as in the 128 MB test module they have already created. This is a hundred times more than with existing technology.
Japanese scientists have come up with an alternative method . They offer to inject something like a “hot swap” mechanism into an existing flash memory, when the failure of individual cells does not affect the operation of the entire module. According to the calculations of the Japanese, the lifetime of the “ferroelectric” NAND module is increased to 100 million cycles, and the process can be reduced to 10 nm.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/29277/
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