Flash memory breakthrough could lead to even more reliable data storage

Although NAND flash, the storage that’s found in smartphones, tablets and many computers today, is faster than traditional platter-based hard drives, it does have its limitations as well. For starters, NAND flash storage is usually only good for about 10,000 read/write cycles before it fails. Taiwanese engineers from Macronix plan to announce at the 2012 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting that it has figured out how to improve NAND flash storage read/write cycles from 10,000 to 100 million cycles using a “self-healing” process that uses a flash chip with “onboard heaters that could anneal small groups of memory cells.” The result is a chip that can be erased and rewritten on over and over, even when it should theoretically break down. As promising as Macronix’s breakthrough could be for the mobile industry, there are no plans for a commercial product to be released any time in the near future.