The need for advanced memory storage systems:
In today’s supercomputing era, the need to compute huge amount of data is a complex task, which needs quite advanced devices and equipment’s such as super computer, advanced integrated systems, data storage facilities, cold rooms and much more. Among these, the need for technology to store huge amount of data is very critical. Not only for huge computing devices, even for daily tasks the memory units should be advanced and minimal in size.
Semiconductor Memory:
With the invention of semiconductors in the previous century, semiconductor memory came into existence. Semiconductor memory is used in any electronics assembly that uses computer processing technology. Semiconductor memory is the essential electronics component needed for any computer-based PCB assembly. In addition to this, memory cards have become commonplace items for temporarily storing data – everything from the portable flash memory cards used for transferring files, to semiconductor memory cards used in cameras, mobile phones, and the like. Automatic test equipment (ATE) are used to test such memory units to evaluate results and for analysis purpose.
There are various kinds of semiconductor memory available in the market such as ROM, RAM, EPROM, EEPROM, Flash memory, DRAM, SRAM, SDRAM, as well as F-RAM and MRAM are available, and new types are being developed to enable improved performance. Flash memory is one of the most popular ones among these.
Flash Memory: An introduction
Flash memory is a non-volatile memory type which is used for storage and transfer of data between a computer and digital devices. It can be reprogramed and erased anytime. USB flash drives are one of the most common devices which uses flash memory. It is also used in digital camera, MP3 players and other devices.
Flash memory was introduced by Dr. Fujio Masuoka in 1980. He was a factory manager at Toshiba Corporation. A flash memory chip is composed of NOR or NAND gates. NOR is a type of memory cell created by Intel in 1988. The NOR gate interface supports full addresses, data buses and random access to any memory location. The shelf life of NOR flash is 10,000 to 1,000,000 write/erase cycles. The reason behind this memory type was called flash was because it has the ability to erase and rewrite data in a flash.
Applications of Flash Memory:
Flash memory is used widely in many digital devices. The market share of Flash memory is less when compared with the market share of RAM memory types such as DRAM but has relatively more market share than other non-volatile memory types. Following are some of the applications of Flash memory:
- It is widely used in various consumer devices such as computers, digital cameras, personal digital assistants, cell phones, USB, global positioning system, television set-top boxes, MP3 players etc.
- There is a wide array of application of flash memory in industrial devices too such as in military equipment’s, security systems, disk drives, medical products, wireless communication devices, scanners and many more.
In view of all its applications, Flash memory technology is one of the key forms of semiconductor memory technology in use today.
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