What"s Inside a Flash Drive?
In the age of technology, many of us wonder how this or that gadget actually functions.
I'm sure flash drives make no exception.
Some of them are extremely small or come in funny shapes, yet they all perform the miraculous task of transferring and storing our most precious files.
So what makes them tick? What happens when they memorize or erase? What are the secrets hiding inside their casings? Luckily, we also live in the age of information so I will try to satisfy your curiosity.
The first thing that needs to be looked at is the interior.
If you happen to own a transparent USB drive you hold the advantage here.
But if not, you will have to open up the case.
In there you will see a green circuit board - something familiar to most people - and two black chips.
These are the main components.
One is a microcontroller (usually on the right) and one is a flash memory chip (usually on the left).
The first is the small version of a computer processor and the latter explains the terms flash drive and memory stick.
But what is a flash memory? Basically, it's a technology that's electrical in nature but requires no power to store data.
It achieves this with floating gate (FG) transistors that reside inside its memory cells.
The way such a transistor works is that it has this additional gate - the already mentioned FG - placed between the control gate and channel area, separated by oxide layers.
These layers make it possible for electrons - basically the data - to get trapped and stored in the FG.
In order to erase, a different set of voltages is applied which causes the electrons to be drawn out again.
When a pen drive is plugged in, the commands given from the host machine (write/erase/read) decide what voltages are exercised in order to make the flash memory act the way it's suppose to.
These processes are pretty complex so it's amazing that the chips have gotten smaller and more capable over the years, especially with the invention of multi-level memory cells.
It reminds us of the rapid technological advances made with the processors of our pen drives' larger companions - the personal computers.
The biggest USB memory on the market right now is 64GB but soon we should see the release of 128GB pen drives.
Samsung for instance has promised one since last year.
How that large of a capacity is doable though is quite a puzzle with current methods.
So it's very likely that innovations are involved.
Time will tell!
I'm sure flash drives make no exception.
Some of them are extremely small or come in funny shapes, yet they all perform the miraculous task of transferring and storing our most precious files.
So what makes them tick? What happens when they memorize or erase? What are the secrets hiding inside their casings? Luckily, we also live in the age of information so I will try to satisfy your curiosity.
The first thing that needs to be looked at is the interior.
If you happen to own a transparent USB drive you hold the advantage here.
But if not, you will have to open up the case.
In there you will see a green circuit board - something familiar to most people - and two black chips.
These are the main components.
One is a microcontroller (usually on the right) and one is a flash memory chip (usually on the left).
The first is the small version of a computer processor and the latter explains the terms flash drive and memory stick.
But what is a flash memory? Basically, it's a technology that's electrical in nature but requires no power to store data.
It achieves this with floating gate (FG) transistors that reside inside its memory cells.
The way such a transistor works is that it has this additional gate - the already mentioned FG - placed between the control gate and channel area, separated by oxide layers.
These layers make it possible for electrons - basically the data - to get trapped and stored in the FG.
In order to erase, a different set of voltages is applied which causes the electrons to be drawn out again.
When a pen drive is plugged in, the commands given from the host machine (write/erase/read) decide what voltages are exercised in order to make the flash memory act the way it's suppose to.
These processes are pretty complex so it's amazing that the chips have gotten smaller and more capable over the years, especially with the invention of multi-level memory cells.
It reminds us of the rapid technological advances made with the processors of our pen drives' larger companions - the personal computers.
The biggest USB memory on the market right now is 64GB but soon we should see the release of 128GB pen drives.
Samsung for instance has promised one since last year.
How that large of a capacity is doable though is quite a puzzle with current methods.
So it's very likely that innovations are involved.
Time will tell!
Source...