Flash Twenty Years Old

Flash memory will celebrate its 20th birthday during the third annual Flash Memory Summit, hosted by Conference ConCepts, Inc., at the Santa Clara Marriott, Santa Clara, California on August 12-14, 2008. Archival items from Intel, Kingston Technology, Samsung, SanDisk, Spansion, and Toshiba commemorating the evolution of flash from 1988 to today will be on display in the Exhibit Hall on August 13 from Noon to 2:00 p.m. and from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., and on August 14 from Noon to 2:00 p.m.

Flash memory is one of the world’s fastest-growing semiconductor technologies and has matured into a mainstream technology over the past two decades. The ’20 Years of Flash’ exhibit will feature early flash chips, the first flash cards, USB drives, MP3 players, multimedia cell phones, and other flash devices, as well as copies of documents related to the invention and application of flash memory.

No technology has ever rocketed to prominence as fast as flash memory, which has found its way into everyday life through digital cameras, cellphones, laptops, music players, televisions, and cars. Toshiba first envisioned flash technology and began publishing articles on it in the early 1980s. However, it wasn’t until 1988 that Intel introduced the first flash memory chip in production — a 256Kb NOR chip priced at $20 USD — which opened the floodgates to a myriad of new devices and applications that rely on flash memory for highly reliable solid state storage.

"We are proud to commemorate the 20th anniversary of a storage technology as valuable as flash memory," said Tom Coughlin, president of Coughlin Associates and Chairperson, Flash Memory Summit. "Flash has changed our lives over the last 20 years and it will continue to have a tremendous impact on a great many applications in the future."

"Flash has made a bigger impact in a shorter period of time than any prior semiconductor," said Jim Handy, Analyst, Objective Analysis, and Senior Program Advisor, Flash Memory Summit. "In the last decade, we have seen NAND flash take over the markets for film, floppy disks, and CDs. Over the short 20 years of flash memory’s life, this technology has found its way into nearly every piece of digitized equipment in the home and workplace. Objective Analysis estimates that the typical automobile contains between five and ten flash chips, and that most US households have between 20 and 50 flash chips for a wide range of applications."