The new flash memory technology being developed for mass storage is designed to be faster and less expensive than rotating storage: the flash memory technique uses a chip which has its electrons accelerated to a point where they cross the boundary into a floating gate, where they stay until the gate is discharged to erase the data – this is the technology Intel Corp has put into the Psion MC range, and it is also being explored by Seeq Technology and Toshiba Corp; because Intel’s ETOX (EPROM tunnel oxide) flash memories are read-write non-volatile devices they don’t need the battery back-up required by static RAM-based systems, and being solid-state, they are ideal for portable computers.
