Omis 34 Santa Clara

Flash Memory

Before the year 1987 several companies in the computing industry where trying to find a way of creating a device that would save computer files in an external memory. After years of research Toshiba’s innovation brought as what we now call flash technology. This was a complete technology breakthrough in computing because it made possible the idea of sharing files with unlimited different computers. It was the first time people could actually connect a flash memory to a computer without the need of special software or drivers.

Flash memory is a chip-based storage medium that represents data using electrons, there are currently two types of flash memories, NOR and NAND. In one hand the NOR technology offers a faster read speed and random access capabilities, making this technology useful for devices such as cell phones and kindles. “On the other hand NAND offers fast write/erase capability and is slower than NOR in the area of read speed”. NAND technology is usually used for applications such as digital video, music storage, data storage, etc. Flash memory storage systems will not have mechanical failures giving it an advantage over hard drives and optical disc systems. Both the NOR and NAND types were invented by the prestigious Dr. Masuoka while he was a worker in the Toshiba company in the year 1987. Toshiba officials stated that the name flash was given by one of Dr.Masuoka’s subordinates, Shoji Arrizumi. He picked this name because the idea of having a device that could erase and save new information frequently reminded him of the flash of a camera. Sadly Toshiba officials could not see the revolutionary product they had on their hands and decided not to fund further research of this technology. Their major competitor Intel did see the enormous potential and major profit this new product flash memory could have. Intel introduced the first commercial NOR type flash memory chip just a year later after Dr.Masuoka’s invention.

Flash memory became...