Larry,
First Intel's StrataFlash is actually a 32Meg flash that stores
2 different voltage levels allowing the chip to store "twice" as
much information. Nothing new, Scandisk already has this out on the
market but not on a single chip like Intel does.
Second, I doubt that the 64Mbit EDO will cost $30 in Q1'98, much much
lower.
Third, what Intel was getting at was that when you turn your computer
on with this new flash your computer will automatically load what you had running before the computer was turned off. Example, you have
win95, excel7, netscape, quicken, and quake running on your pc. You
turn your computer off and when you turn it back on you have all your
apps up and running, no more reloading. Currently 4Mbit flash can only hold enough information to tell you computer to start your autoexec file and such.
High density Flash has more of an impact on your "non-volatile"
memory (hard drive) than your volatile memory (all sram, all dram)
Flash like the developmental FRAM is non-volatile. This means
it retains the data once the power has been turned off. Also unlike
the DRAMs and like FRAM, it's dog slow even compared to the FPM stuff.
Flash also has a limit to the amount of reading and writing the chip can take. The latest I heard was that a flash cell can be accessed about 50,000 times. Think about how many times you start your
computer and this is still a long time before the chip dies.
Flash and FRAM are too slow to compete against DRAM. They will
most likely take over the hard drive in the PC. Faster and less
likely to be damaged be being dropped ("sorry about your laptop,
hope it's ok";)
Hope this wasn't too techie.
Meg |
