Nonvolatile Memory Technologies with Emphasis on Flash

The story of Flash memory is one of a unique technology that was almost a failure. Only after three unsuccessful attempts did Flash succeed in the marketplace. To succeed, Flash had to solve several technical problems and had to create a market for itself. Once these issues were addressed, Flash quickly became the highest volume nonvolatile memory displacing the EPROM only 5 years after its successful entry in the market. Today, Flash is challenging DRAM for the highest volume semiconductor memory used in the world. While the market forecast for Flash is bright, the technology is approaching fundamental limits in its scalability.