This week saw some noteworthy milestones for flash memory technology (also sometimes referred to “nonvolatile NAND”). First, on Wednesday Samsung (News - Alert) announced shipment of its new hybrid hard-disk drives that combine traditional magnetic storage with flash.

 

Samsung’s new drives take advantage of the ReadyDrive feature in Microsoft’s (News - Alert) new operating system, Windows Vista. The flash memory acts as a temporary cache, reducing the number of disk accesses—which means less power usage. The company claims the new hybrid system results in 70-90 percent cuts in power consumption. Flash memory also allows PCs using this ReadyDrive feature to wake up faster.

 

Today comes news from Reuters that two other consumer electronics manufacturers—Apple (News - Alert), Inc. and LG Electronics, Inc.—also have plans to soon release hybrid drives. If this is indeed the case, it will create some pretty intense competition with Samsung, a company that Reuters labels “the world’s largest maker of NAND flash memory for gadgets such as USB flash drives.”

 

Indeed, over the past several months, Samsung has been pretty busy in the memory arena. In January, the company unveiled what it described as the industry’s first NAND flash memory powered by 50 nanometer process technology. The new chips, Samsung said, offer nearly two-fold performance improvements, especially useful for mobile devices where quickly storing and reading large data files is necessary.

 

A month previous, Samsung announced its development of one gigabit, mobile DRAM memory based on 80 nanometer process technology. The company touted this achievement by noting that, by using synchronous DRAM, the new chips provide significant improvements over double-die stack chips—at least 30 percent more power efficiency, for example.

 

Both of these achievements, aimed at the mobile communications and computing markets, indicate that Samsung isn’t messing around when it comes to the next generation of memory. The company may very well be ahead of the curve in this area, giving its would-be competitors a run for their money.

 

Reuters cited reports from American Technology (News - Alert) Research analyst Shaw Wu that Apple is working on a small computer dubbed ‘subnotebook’—allegedly slated for launch during the second half of 2007—which will include flash memory. The company already uses flash memory in its iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle music players. Apple so far has declined to comment on the flash memory rumors, Reuters said.

 

Meanwhile, a Friday report in The Enquirer said that LG’s R400 laptop, scheduled for shipment in the next few weeks, will use a hybrid drive. LG has yet to confirm this claim.

 

What’s so great about flash memory? The Reuters report listed these advantages over traditional hard drives:

That last point may be of particular interest for consumers who are tired of waiting for their computers to start up; flash has the potential to enable much, much faster startup.

 

As with any new technology, prices remain higher for flash than traditional drives, but this almost certainly would change if it catches on—heralding in a race among manufacturers to reach market with flash chips. Only time will tell, of course.