Electronic appliances have been screaming for more memory. They're about to get it-and the digital world may never be the same.
Intel has announced a new memory chip for digital devices that doubles up on storage space, effectively giving users twice the bang for their buck. For the consumer market, more memory means a multitude of new devices with a greater number of features.
"The new memory will be great for the consumer electronics industry," said Curt Nichols, marketing manager for Intel's computing enhancement group. "Cell phones will get high-quality answering machines built-in. Digital cameras will store more pictures with better resolution."
Intel hopes the new technology will help them grab a greater share in the flash memory market--a market valued at $US3.5 billion by market researcher Dataquest. Currently, Intel leads the competition with a 33 percent share, said Dataquest analyst Bruce Bonner.
Intel's technology, called StrataFlash, rewrites a basic tenet in the computer industry--that a single memory cell stores either a 0 or a 1, the equivalent of on or off. By forcing double occupancy in each cell, four values can be stored instead.
Smaller flash memory makers, like Sandisk, have similar multibit flash memory technologies, but sell the technology in flash memory cards, not as chips.
"A chip, the same size as our previous generation, can hold twice as much memory," said Nichols. Conversely, a chip with the same capacity as today's top-of-the-line silicon -- about 32Mbits, or about two hours of voice-quality digital audio -- will shrink to half the real estate.
The ability to store more data in less space at the same cost is has information appliance drooling. "This is great for network devices," said Ken Soohoo, chief technical officer and vice-president of engineering for Internet device software maker PlanetWeb. The startup makes software for Internet television devices, one of which competes with WebTV.
"More flash memory means we will be able to store more information on the device rather than having to pull it off the Internet," explained Soohoo.
Information like personal preferences, e-mail and some data can be stored on the device. More importantly, the system software of Internet-connected devices can be updated over the Net, ensuring compatibility in a rapidly changing market.
Other devices, such as US Robotics' subsidiary Palm Computing could use the technology in a future product. "Today's Palm Pilot does not use flash," said Donna Dubinsky, general manager for Palm Computing. "The problems with flash today--like high cost and high power consumption -- bar us from using it in the Pilot." The company's winning personal information device could offer more features and greater flexibility if it had more memory.
Yet, the technology isn't a big splash with one of the most popular info appliance: the computer. The main memory for today's computers are based on dynamic RAM, which keeps data in memory by periodically refreshing the data -- sort of like Pavlovian shock treatment.
Flash memory, also called flash ROM, is a kind of memory that stores data even in the absence of power. This makes it valuable for portable devices where power conservation is key. Devices that require occasional updating of their operating system -- like set-top boxes and modems -- also benefit from flash memory's reliability. Yet, accessing the stored data is far slower than DRAM, making it ill-suited for computer memory.
"This is really not applicable to computer memory," said Nichols. "Flash memory can only be written to, perhaps, a million times. With DRAM, you are constantly writing to it." Other computer products, like modems and printers, will benefit from bigger flash memory, though.
The new memory will be sold in a 64M-bit package for about $US30, or about 4 hours of voice-quality audio. Intel intends to begin shipping the product in the first quarter of next year.
