DRAMexchange, Taipei-based market research firm, said last week that the adoption of solid-state drives on the computer vendor has slowed, as prices for memory chips NAND - raw solid discs - has increased. The company also said that the computer had been wary of using solid-state drives as the current operating systems are not fully optimized for SSDs.

Numonyx NAND flash chip

(List of participants: Numonyx)
And the popularity of Flash storage waning in Netbooks. These tiny laptops to use solid-state drives almost completely. However, Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and others are moving in large numbers for the configurations with a large hard drives instead of low-power solid-state drives.

SSDs, typically offer better performance - is often much more productive - than hard drives and more durable because they have no moving parts.

Although the substance is still used, doubts about the long-term preservation of data in solid-state hard disk drives do not look quite so pass?. Ed Doller, chief technology officer Numonyx, a flash memory chip Maker, which was rotated from Intel and STMicroelectronics in the past year, has considered this issue in recent telephone interview. Numonyx makes two types of flash: NOR, used for storing computer programs and NAND, widely used as a carrier of data in digital cameras, media players, smartphones, as well as solid-state drives.

“This, when compared. What’s on your hard drive it if it happens to fail. In SSD, then when it happens to fail,” said Doller, which critics NAND only because his company is looking for new media - such as Phase change memory - that can overcome some NAND inherent limitations.

Doller said of the Epiphany, after loading it up 20-year-old IBM AT. “I made the thing as it actually booted from the hard drive. If your computer was built in solid-state disk, I can almost guarantee you that would not have worked. He has lost his information during this time period,” said Doller.

Doller said NAND storage will be even more risky, as the increase in density - squeezing more memory into smaller areas. NAND is classified as a non-volatile memory device, because it does not lose its data contents when the computer is turned off - as well as the hard disk. Dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, which are used as main memory on all the computers are not lose its contents when the computer is turned off.

“When you talk about non-volatile memory device, it really only two things that matter. The first time, how many times you can write (data) to the device. The second is how long will be in the data device,” he said. “Over time, we declined in these two very important parameters,” he said.

Doller continues. “It’s one thing for a 34-nm NAND device is a card for your phone. This is another thing that I’m going to sell in the same 34-nm for someone who is going to build a solid drive for the (corporate) business.”

Controller chips, integrated flash memory device may alleviate the disadvantages of flash based storage management, as the data is stored, Doller said. For example, moving data stored in the device - called “wear leveling” - to avoid the use of one area of the disk over and over again. For solid state disk vendors like Samsung and Intel, the controller chip is the secret sauce, not only to control how data is stored, and increase productivity.

The problem, according to Doller, is that the user must implicitly trust the developer and manufacturer of the disc. “Whoever builds that the disc must be very difficult to understand how you and your operating system is used that is not volatile memory,” he said. “If the SSD technology is not very high-level, disk failure can occur.

Phase change memory - the next step?
With Numonyx solution? Phase change memory. Last week, Samsung, and they announced Numonyx joint development of the market specifications for the phase change memory (PCM) products. Phase change memory can read and write data very quickly with less power than conventional NOR and NAND flash memory, and one bit may be changed by either 1 or 0, without the need to first delete the entire block of cells - one of the drawbacks of the flash.

Phase change memory, also will be “executed”, allowing the sharing of code and data for secure storage of the code - is particularly useful for mobile phones.

Sounds good, does not it? But the phase change memory is one big problem. Chipmakers have been talking about changing the phase in over many decades. Companies typically develop in the prototype stage, and change to promote their advantage, and then not deliver.

Doller is Trojan horse strategy.

“Put a number of PCM is that (in the solid state) drive to facilitate the management of the media for it. After the PCM gets there - perhaps that is one percent, two percent of the total amount of memory - my belief is that it would act as a Trojan horse. Once it is understood that customers reliability, it increases productivity, “he said.

This will increase the demand, forcing producers to increase production and, ultimately, lower costs, in accordance with the flash memory.