Samsung is not ignoring its NAND flash to focus on PRAM. At similar time it showed PRAM, company also showed off its first 40 nm chip, a NAND flash memory module for use in memory cards able to store up to 64 GB of data, or about forty movies. The new chip gives Samsung a 5 nm edge on Intel and continues it on target to fulfilling its promise to double the capacity of NAND flash every twelve months.

There is real pressure to continue up this speed too. Users want their gadgets to be smaller and do more. Mobile handset not only takes phone calls these days, but also has a camera, digital music player, and various computing features, including ability to surf the Internet. Storage plays a main role, with users wanting to take their photos, videos, and songs with them wherever they go. This trend to small but capable and storage-intensive devices shows each sign of continuing for some time.

That is well with Samsung, because company is ready to shrink its chips right in tune with that trend. It has developed a fresh design technique, Charge Trap Flash, which will permit it to shrink NAND chip features down to 20 nm finally. This method will lead to production of 256 gigabit chips. Instead of using floating gates, a CTF chip places data temporarily in a holding chamber made of silicon nitride.

Samsung is getting new uses for its NAND flash. The company is making a hybrid drive, a type of hard drive for laptops that uses NAND flash as a disk cache. Here flash memory can actually come into its own, speeding up boot times and declining power consumption. The chip for hybrid drives boasts up to 4 GB of NAND flash for a data buffer. You will see these pretty soon; Samsung plans to have chips in mass production.