Art, thanks for the reply!
<<docpaul--Regarding patents, the protection offered by a patent begins technically when the patent is approved, but the day the patent is applied for is important in order to show that someone else's application filed later may be limited by "prior art.">>
So needless to say, it's to a company's benefit to be mum about such breakthroughs until officially deemed a patent. But that's the concept that is interesting to me, b/c that implies that companies such as SST are really at the mercy of the US Patent Office.. this patent took 2.5 years from the date of application to be granted. That in many cases would be product obsolesence by the time it's granted! If SST releases the technology within a product before the patent is granted, then anyone could copy that process until the patent is formally announced. Correct?
<<For example, this SSTI patent you mentioned involves a type of flash memory known as "NOR.">>
That's actually not true. The patent describes a way of organizing nonvolatile memory.. and that can include NOR, NAND, FeRAM, etc.. unless I've read it wrong?
<< The type of flash memory that SanDisk specializes in is known as "NAND." >>
I'm continually confused by this then I guess. My understanding was that many of SNDK's flash cards included NOR, and only recently have made transitions to NAND b/c of the inherent benefits of storing higher densities of data in arrays that NAND by it's design allows for.
<<It's not clear to me (and I hope someone who knows will comment) that patents on NOR flash chips apply as well to NAND.>>
Like I said, the way I read this patent.. this could just as easily be applied to NOR as it could be to NAND..
and I quote:
To facilitate the understanding of the invention, a brief description of a memory cell technology is described below. In an embodiment the invention applies to Source Side Injection (SSI) flash memory cell technology, which will be referred to as SSI flash memory cell technology. The invention is equally applicable to other technologies such as drain-side channel hot electron (CHE) programming (ETOX), P-channel hot electron programming, other hot electron programming schemes, Fowler-Nordheim (FN) tunneling, ferro-electric memory, and other types of memory technology.
Doesn't it imply therefore that SST could in fact apply this architecture to next generation nonvolatile storage?
all the best, docpaul |
