By Drew Belisle 2nd hour 9/25/09 PC Networking

Flash memory is a form of computer memory that is programmed and erased electrically. It is a type of electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) chip.

There are two transistors which are separated by a thin oxide layer. The two transistors are known as the floating gate and the control gate. The only way that the floating gate can get to the word line is by passing through the control gate. During this the cell has a value of 1. To change the value to a 0, it needs to go through a process called Fowler-Nordheim tunneling.

To change the placement of electrons in the floating gate it uses tunneling. There is an electrical charge that comes from the bit line and is applied to the floating gate. The excited electrons are pushed, go through, and are trapped. They are trapped on the other side of the thin oxide layer, which gives it a negative charge.

The electrons, that now have a negative charge, are between the control and floating gates, acting as a barrier. A cell sensor monitors how much charge is passing through the floating gate. When the flow through the gate is above the half way point, it has a value of one and when it goes below the 50% spot, it becomes a 0.

If there is a blank EEPROM, the gates are fully open, which gives each of the cells a value of one. For the electrons to return to a normal 1, by using an electric field, or a higher voltage charge. The in-circuit wiring applies the electric field to the chip or a certain part section, known as a block. Instead of erasing one byte at a time, like most EEPROMs do, flash memory erases a block or the whole chip, and then can be rewritten. This makes it so flash memory is faster.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/flash-memory.htm

Dr. Fujio Masuoka invented flash memory while working for Toshiba in 1984. One of his colleagues came up with the name Flash because it reminded him of a flash of camera. Flash memory was presented at an invention, which was the Integrated Electronics Devices Meeting, in 1984 by Dr. Masuoka.

Intel saw how good this invention could become and created the first commercial NOR type flash chip in 1988. Then in 1989, Samsung and Toshiba created a NAND flash memory. In 1994, Compact Flash was invented and introduced by SanDisk. In 1999, the SD memory card was released by a combination of SanDisk, Toshiba and Matsushita.

In 2001, the worlds first 1 Gigabit Compact Flash card was introduced. In 2003, the next-generation 2 Gigabit NAND flash drive was introduced by Toshiba and SanDisk Also in 2003, the miniSD card was introduced. In 2005, SanDisk announces microSD, which is the smallest memory card in the world.

In 2009, Toshiba said that the SDXC flash memory cards were going to come out this year.

There are two main types of Flash Memory: NOR and NAND.

NOR flash is the faster memory, but when having to erase and write data, it takes longer.

The storage capacity of NAND is a lot more than that of NOR, but the random access is slow for it.

SD Cards Compact Flash Cards USB Drives Memory Sticks SmartMedia Cards

SanDisk Qmemory Kingston Transcend Sony Samsung Kingston Intel Toshiba Lexar Kingmax Fujifilm

For you to get data, flash memory doesnt need a constant power supply. The lifespan can very from 100,000 to 100,000,000 write cycles. They have very fast access times, dont use much power, and has an immunity to severe shock or vibration.

The future for flash memory looks very good. Hard disk drives are going to be replaced by flash memory in its next evolution. Flash memory doesnt have the mechanical limitations that the hard disk drives had. A lot of people like flash memory because it is fast, noiseless, reliable, and it uses less power than hard disk drives. In the future, flash memory will become the main memory choice of many people, just as it has started to do all ready.

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