Moore's Law strikes again
 

Samsung: a Giant Goes Small
Tiny new 4-gigabit flash memory keeps Moore’s Law in motion.

Just when you thought cell phones, MP3 players, and digital cameras couldn’t possibly get any smaller, Samsung Electronics has announced mass production of the world’s highest-density flash memory devices.

Samsung’s newest flash writes data at 16 megabytes per second, a 50 percent enhancement over a 90 nm 2 gb device, thereby enabling real-time data storage of high-definition video images, according to a statement from Samsung.

More here...

Now I can envision a totally solid state video camera with resolution and framerates => MiniDV. That's worth waiting for. NO moving parts, no media, or, removeable media... Cool!

I envision devices so small they can be easily lost and so powerful you'd be tempted to load them up with information you don't want to lose ...and definately don't want someone else to find. :drool:

That day was... Saturday. I took some pics and then when I connected the device, I was surprised they displayed on the big screen. Very High embarassement potential.

Oh, and durable. Do you know what Sony's memory stick media looks like? Like a stick of gum, really, but only about two inches long. Well, I accidentally ran one through the wash AND the dryer (oops). Worked fine. It was really clean (on the outside :blush:)

With that kind of density, I wonder how they will handle airport scanners?

Don't they mean 4 gigabyte?

4 gigabits is about 500 megabytes isn't it?

Moore's Law was never under threat due to memory density. Too many possible technologies exist, all very promising, that would make memories so much smaller. Many 'under development' technologies are quantum dots, polymer ferroelectrics, nanowire, magnetic RAM, and Ovonic Unified (phase change) Memory. The last was originally demonstrated in the 1950s. The current programming speeds may be on the order of 30 nanoseconds.

Meanwhile, quantum mechanics says disk drives can get much smaller. In fact, the limiting factor on disk drive size has been more about profits than technology limits. Disk drives still have that much more capacity in the technology. The first optical memory storage device is expected soon from IBM and others. Memory storage is not a limiting factor to Moore's law.

Threat to Moore's Law is that transistors are now down to a three atom thickness in some places with no proven technology to solve this dimensional and thermal (electron leakage) problem. The latest solution - Hi K dielectrics - has not been working out so well. Transistors are now generating too much heat and therefore cannot increase too much more in speed. That is the 'brick wall' that threatens Moore's Law.

Meanwhile the 8 gigabit non-volatile memory was announced last week (or earlier).

tw, can you cite, please?

Also, note in the lead article that production was already started, not vaporware.

Samsung also states in the article that they have an 8gb device developed, but no plans for production yet.