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Technology Stocks : Atmel - the trend is about to change -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (8011)	3/11/1998 1:57:00 PM
From: JakeStraw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13565

Other companies saw ATML's fat margins at the time and entered the fray. Now ATML's products are no longer proprietary.

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (8011)	3/11/1998 4:57:00 PM
From: Ian@SI	Respond to of 13565

Mike, Re: Atmel produces, "non-volatile" memory products. I always thought "non-volatile" meant they were not in the commodity game like DRAM chip makers are. Was I wrong about the definition DRAM loses its contents when the power goes off. "non-volatile" or "Flash" memory preserves its contents even if the power goes off.

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (8011)	3/11/1998 7:38:00 PM
From: Mang Cheng	Respond to of 13565

Definition of 'flash memory' from TechWeb : A memory chip that holds its content without power. Derived from the EEPROM chip technology, which can be erased in place, flash memory is less expensive and more dense. Unlike DRAM and SRAM memory chips, in which a single byte can be written, flash memory must be erased and written in fixed blocks, typically ranging from 512 bytes up to 256KB. The term was coined by Toshiba for its ability to be erased "in a flash. Flash chips have been used in various communications and industrial products as well as to replace ROM BIOS chips so that the BIOS could be updated. Flash chips generally have lifespans from 100K to 300K write cycles. Flash memory chips are conveniently packaged as "flash cards," using the PCMCIA PC Card format. They are becoming more visible as solid state disks in palmtops, digital cameras and, increasingly, in consumer products. There are two types of flash disks. The earlier linear flash, which is also used to execute a program directly from the chip (XIP), requires Flash Translation Layer (FTL) or Flash File System (FFS) software to make it look like a disk drive. There are various implementations of FTL and FFS. The second newer type is the ATA flash disk, which uses the same 512-byte block size as a hard disk. Since the ATA interface is a common standard, all ATA flash disks are interchangeable. See CompactFlash. The CD-ROM version of this encyclopedia contains an image which is not available for Internet use. An 85MB Flash Disk Flash disks are used in portable devices such as digital cameras, palmtops and PDAs. They are considerably more expensive than hard disks, but are much more rugged and are not volatile. (Photo courtesy of SanDisk Corporation.) techweb.com Mang