What Life Today Without NAND Flash?

Taking a look at what life today would be like without NAND flash technology, Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc.‘s NAND Flash Deprivation Experiments hit the ground running earlier this year.

Today, the company announced that the results are in. Completely non-scientific, tongue-in-cheek evidence supports the conclusion that we really can’t, in fact, function without flash technology.

Enabling the mobility of content in today’s consumer products, NAND flash has become the de-facto silicon storage of choice for everything from memory cards and USB drives to SSDs and enterprise flash arrays. Having invented the technology 25 years ago, Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., (TAEC) rolled out a multi-faceted, interactive campaign that focused on exploring the impact that this technology breakthrough has had on our everyday lives.

A Cliffhanger: The Plot Thickens
Capping off the campaign is the fifth and final video in the NAND flash Deprivation Experiment series from Toshiba – which concludes with a plot twist you might not expect.

Over the course of the campaign, five lucky Facebook fans were winners of new Toshiba Excite tablets, and hundreds of Facebook fans received themed t-shirts – with many submitting photos of themselves wearing them. Multiple industry thought leaders chimed in on NAND flash’s impact, providing quotes featured on the dedicated microsite, which serves as a one-stop shop for all things related to the 25th anniversary of NAND flash. The site also features a timeline of notable NAND flash achievements over the past 25 years, images, a dedicated flash25 Twitter feed, and more.

Stay tuned
What does the future hold In the short term? The technology will continue to branch out and play a starring role in everything from consumer devices to cloud data centers to enterprise applications.

According to Scott Nelson, SVP, Memory Business Unit, TAEC, "The sky is the limit for what NAND flash technology can do. NAND flash puts higher performance capabilities and smaller, thinner packages into the hands of design engineers – the rest is up to their imaginations."

Miss an Experiment?
Click on the links below to see the NAND flash Deprivation Experiments in their entirety: