64 Mbyte Write once CMOS Chip from Standard Fabs

brian wang writes "Matrix semiconductor has taped out 64 Mbyte write once chip. It is 8 layer memory that can be made at standard fabs. They will be made at Taiwan Semiconductor initially in a 0.25micron process. It will be compatible with Flash. Obviously when they move to 0.18 micron and 0.13 and 0.10 micron processes that already are producing chips the memory size will shoot up to rival CDRoms from single chips. Revolutionary impact for handhelds, PCs, ROMDrives etc..." See, I knew it: Little is better.

ZAP!

[Anonymous Coward]

CDs don't get zapped with static.

Re:OS BIOS

[toastyman]

.... that you could only write once, sure. :)

Someone explain why this is a good thing?

[skoda]

Why should we care about this?

- Write Once Memory: CD-ROM is 10x larger, and is very cheap. DVD-ROM will eventually be about 100x larger.

- Solid-state storage for Digital Cameras: Write-Many memory chips are readily available. They are expensive, but reusable. Will this write-once chip be cheap enough to make it worth while? Or are these chips much smaller, making this interesting to travelers?

- Computer Memory: Obviously not useful there (I don't see a market ofr single-use computers :)

Is there other info about this memory, showing why this is of any use?

Re:So WHAT capacities are possible?

[afidel]

Well proprietary Sony memory may not be cheap, but compact flash and smartmedia sure are. 320MB CF can be had for as cheap as $142. Tell me that's not cheap. Hell 2 years ago that much sdram would have cost at least that much. Speaking of cheap, compact flash costs only $20 for a 64MB piece, this tech is going to have to be damn cheap to be worth it. I mean who is going to buy write once memory for even a small fraction of the read/write equivilant?

Re:How much will be "enough"?

[Howie]

Well, I have 140Gb of storage for MP3s. I'd like to be able to carry that around, for a start. No more media for my walkman - just everything already in it.

Re:I hope they do well, buuut....

[ianezz]

Understand that you can't upgrade it, you can't change anything that's on there ... you're stuck with what they give you

Well, it depends. On a multisession CDROM you can add data until there's space on it. A translating layer in the middle could present the data in the new session as an overlay over the data in the previous sessions, thus giving you a "write few times - read many times" storage media, even if a given area can be written only once. This indeed is what is done at least for the table of contents of a multisession CDROM.

Since CDROMs have slow access time, this is pratical only for the TOC, which is read only few times, but for these chips that would be a non-issue, and assuming you don't have to write 64MB (or whatever size they'll be) at once on them, you could effectively "update" the data on them.

Incidentally, access to earlier versions of the data would be easy: one would just have to consider all the sessions but the last N ones...

Does it still sound weird to use them for storing firmware?

Re:So WHAT capacities are possible?

[KILNA]

I buy write-once CDR's all the time and never even consider buying CDRW's. This is a direct result of the cost difference between the two, and the practical similarities in how they function for my purposes. For storing information that I don't expect to modify, why wouldn't I use write-only media, especially if there's a significant cost savings over an competing read-write medium? For photography there's already cameras out there that burn to a CDR as you take pictures, so there's definitely a market for folks who don't need to modify the information after its stored.

All things being equal, why wouldn't I use something that's write-only, more reliable and faster than CDR's since it isn't bogged down by moving parts, and of an expected comparable price to optical media? Yeah, its vaporware right now, but if they manage to make those criteria I think it would be unwise to say they wouldn't have a market.