The December issue of the IEEE Spectrum includes a fascinating article about a 100 million cycle flash memory developed by Macronix. The company will present this design at at IEDM this month.
In brief: Macronix’ researchers buried a heater in the array to heat the tunnel dielectric, annealing out the disruptions & traps that might cause a bit to fail.
A prototype has so far been tested more than 100 million cycles and it shows no sign of impending failure. Researchers believe that it is likely to reach one billion or more cycles, but such testing will take several months. This just may be able to Continue reading “Macronix Solves Flash Wear Problem”