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From
IEEE Spectrum – Flash memory wears out after being programmed and erased about 10 000 times. That’s fine for a USB dongle that you’ll probably lose in a year, but not ideal for the solid-state drives of server farms. And the same problem keeps manufacturers from using flash to replace other types of computer memories. This month, at the 2012 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting, engineers from Macronix plan to report the invention of a self-healing NAND flash memory that survives more than 100 million cycles.
What’s more, that may not even be the real limit. “We do not know what would eventually cause the device to fail, since we have not seen the end-of-life signals yet,” says Hang‑Ting Lue, a project deputy director at Macronix, which is located in Hsinchu, Taiwan. To test for 1 billion cycles would take several months, he says
Hot Stuff: Current flowing through the memory cells’ gate heats and heals the oxide layers.
See more and subscribe to NextBigFuture at 2012-12-02 13:02:48 Source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/12/self-healing-flash-memory-can-last-over.html