Haktech: Toshiba hails the first 25 years of Flash memory

The NAND Flash memory is 25 years old, and Toshiba intends to celebrate properly a revolutionary technology invented in its labs during the Eighties. Thanks to Flash memory, Toshiba says, now people can enjoy contents, innovation and advanced electronic products in every aspect of their lives.

“The NAND Flash market has grown rapidly, with Flash memory shipping almost 8x more Gigabytes in 2011 than DRAM – Toshiba states – NAND Flash has become the high density silicon storage of choice. NAND Flash memory is used in a variety of memory cards and USB drives, and is found in many consumer, industrial and enterprise cloud applications”.

NAND memory was invented by Fujio Masuoka while working for Toshiba: the name “Flash” came from a suggestion by Masuoka’s colleague Shoji Ariizumi, for whom the title was a visual reminder of the erasure process of bits previously recorded on the NAND chips.

The Flash memory innovation enables people to bring their preferred music, video and books on their mobile devices, Toshiba remarks, thus “unleashing the mobility of content, fueling innovation in the development of products for everyone from consumers to enterprise”.

Toshiba will celebrate the first 25 years of NAND Flash technology hosting “notable industry events and consumer participation”, plus an “interactive campaign that embraces industry voices and experiences exploring the impact of NAND Flash”.