Flash-the memory technology of the future that's here today

The traditional method of designing memory systems was to use DRAM and SRAM for volatile storage and either EPROM or first generation FLASH for non-volatile storage. Today's embedded avionics and military designers can take advantage of the new generation of Flash memories. Flash memory has come of age very quickly. Flash memory chips are available in special environment temperature ranges in speeds as fast as 85 ns and as dense as 8 Mbits. We expect to see special environment parts that have 161Mbits and 75 ns access time in the near future. These fast access times along with very high densities, make Flash a great fit into applications that used to use several ROM, EEPROMs or DRAMs. To help show that Flash is a natural fit into designs that up until now have been using ROM, EEPROM and DRAM, a detailed analysis of Flash technology and how it compares to other memory is provided.