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“Self-healing” NAND flash memory
Taiwan-based Macronix has found a solution for a weakness in flash memory fadeout. A limitation of flash memory is simply that eventually it cannot be used; the more cells in the memory chips are erased, the less useful to store data. The write-erase cycles degrade insulation; eventually the cell fails. “Flash wears out after being programmed and erased about 10,000 times,” said the IEEE Spectrum. Engineers at Macronix have a solution that moves flash memory over to a new life. They propose a “self-healing” NAND flash memory solution that can survive over 100 million cycles.
“Self-healing” NAND flash memory - [Link]
This programmer supports: ST Micro M25(E), ST Micro M45(E), Macronix MX25L, Atmel AT25FS, Atmel AT25DF, Atmel AT25F, Amic A25LxxP, Amic A25Lxxx, Eon EN25(B/D/F/P) read only, Winbond W25X, Winbond W25Q (OTP), SST SST25(LV/VF)xx, SST SST25VFxxxB, Spansion S25FL and ESMT F25L.
vane @ tehnikservice.net gives out 2 x free PCBs for his SPI Flash programmer. Please leave a comment on this post and we will select two random winners to give out the PCBs.
SPI Flash Programmer V2 - [Link]
vane @ tehnikservice.net gives out 2 x free PCB for his SPI Flash programmer. Please leave a comment on this post and we will select two randoms to give out the PCBs.
2 x Free SPI Flash programmer PCBs – leave a comment - [Link]
Richard Comerford writes:
More than ever, cameras are becoming a part of the personal and business devices we carry in our pockets. While the light levels at which today’s photographic image sensors can work is extremely low, having flash lighting means users can capture greater detail at faster speeds. And to be sure that flash systems do not consume a lot of the power budget of these battery-run portable electronics, designers have turned to using LEDs as the light source, rather than the traditional xenon tube.
A broad array of devices is available today for driving LEDs as flash devices. Many can deliver high current so that LEDs can be driven to maximum output. However, the increased efficacy of today’s LEDs – meaning they can deliver more light from less current – means that drivers can also focus on reducing current drain on batteries.
Five Solutions for Driving LED Flash in Mobile Devices - [Link]
This is interesting. Researchers are trying to improve Flash memory density and retention time by using graphene structures. From IEEE Spectrum: [via]
Nanotechnology has a somewhat infamous relationship with flash memory. It has usually taken on the role as its adversary, such as in the case of Nantero or IBM’s Millipede project, and walked away with less than encouraging results.
So I was interested to see that researchers were using graphene as a platform for flash memory that appears to outperform other flash memory structures. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
Researchers from UCLA, IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, Samsung Electronics, Aerospace Corporation, and the University of Queensland, team led by Kang Wang have recently published in ACS Nano an article entitled “Graphene Flash Memory” that demonstrates that graphene may have what it takes to outperform current flash memory technology.
As I have suggested in my post from last week, researchers are not breaking their backs trying to overcome graphene’s lack of band gap as much now as they are instead looking for ways to exploit its intrinsic strengths.
In this case, the researchers were trying to take advantage of graphene’s high density of states, high work function, and atomic thinness.
Graphene-based Flash Memory - [Link]
Mike Chambers writes:
Here is how it works. I have an Arduino Duemilanove with ATMega328 which has two photo-resistors connected (with a 10k pull down resistor). I set up two laser pointers to shine a laser directly onto the photo-resistor (which is enclosed within a dark box). The Arduino monitors the values returned from the light sensor, and watches for any changes that indicate that the laser bean has been broken. When both laser beams are broken, the Arduino calculates the amount of time between when each sensor was tripped. It then sends that value to the Adobe AIR based client, which is connected to the Arduino via USB / Serial port and a serial port proxy (in the case, TinkerProxy).
Arduino based speed detector with a Flash! – [Link]
Today we made a new project SPI Flash Programmer. I needed this programmer to read the contents of 25L1005 on a LCD Monitor.This programmer supports: ST Micro M25(E), ST Micro M45(E), Macronix MX25L, Atmel AT25FS, Atmel AT25DF, Atmel AT25F, Amic A25LxxP, Amic A25Lxxx, Eon EN25(B/D/F/P) read only, Winbond W25X, Winbond W25Q (OTP), SST SST25(LV/VF)xx, SST SST25VFxxxB, Spansion S25FL and ESMT F25L.
Spi Flash Programmer – [Link]
electric_piano_5k writes:
Make an electronic circuit that will trigger camera flashes in sync with a thunder soundtrack (great for Halloween)! The camera flashes are salvaged from old, broken cameras. When used along with lamps plugged into a color organ circuit, it makes a very effective lightning effect.
Lightning effect using camera flash units – [Link]
This article shows how to make a air gap high speed flash. With this flash you are able to capture a bullet in the air. The circuit uses a 35,000 volts capacitor. glacialwanderer.com writes: [via]
In my quest to capture amazing high speed photographs I notice that when photographing shooting bullets the bullets were blurred. I found that standard xenon tube, which standard flashes use, is very bright for the energy put into it because of glowing xenon gas. The book Electronic Flash Strobe by Harold Edgerton explains all the calculations, but in practice this means all the flashes from Nikon, Canon and others that use xenon flash tubes have a minimum duration of 1/40,000th of a second. That’s fast enough for most things, but not for a shooting bullet travels around 1000 feet/second. In 1/40,000th of a second that bullet can travel about 1/3rd of an inch leading to blurry photographs of bullets.
High Speed Air-gap Flash - [Link]
The AVR family of microcontrollers use a modified Harvard Architecture which uses 3 types of memory, most of which are on chip. Learn more about the memory types on the link below.
- Flash
- RAM
- EEPROM
AVR Memory Architecture – [Link]
