14 DAY TRIAL // Some product types and technologies come and go within a few years, but NAND Flash memory is one of those inventions that has already lived a long time and will continue to do so for years.
Toshiba is particularly enthused about the long way that the NAND Flash memory market has come since the first products showed up.
For those who don't know, flash chips have been around since 1987, which was precisely 25 years ago.
Toshiba has decided to celebrate this anniversary, of sorts, throughout the year (2012), by holding “notable industry events” and an interactive campaign to explore the impact that NAND will continue to have.
"NAND flash has truly permeated our lives -- this technology has been a game changer, making the world a different place and making many of the products we use today possible," noted Scott Nelson, vice president, Memory Business Unit, TAEC.
"The cost/performance of NAND flash continues to stand the test of time. NAND flash is leading the way to thin and light hardware, has made the mobility of content possible, and is enabling 'green' storage in the data centers."
To illustrate just how far NAND Flash memory chips have come since 1987, almost eight times as many gigabytes were sold in 2011 than DRAM memory.
The multitude of memory cards, USB flash drives and solid state drives could hardly allow for much less after all, and they aren't the only products that use NAND.
The technology can take various other shapes in enterprise and cloud applications, as well as consumer ones.
All in all, NAND Flash has made it possible for large data volumes to be efficiently processed and for people to always carry around whatever videos, music, books and other data they like. All Toshiba has to do is maintain its competitive edge, since its rivals certainly will.