Scientists in Japan have worked out a new technique for improving the lifespan of flash memory devices from around a decade currently to hundreds of years. The new ferroelectric NAND flash technology can do rewrites 100 million times, versus the 10,000 or so of existing tech, and can be scaled down to 10nm—one third the size of next-gen conventional flash. Furthermore, the ferroelectric chips use a "wear leveling" system to even-out the usage of memory cells, and can even disable bad cells without killing the whole chip. Plus it uses a rewriting voltage of 6 volts versus the 20+ volts of current chips. Sounds like a promising, long-life, low-power future for solid-state drives. Though as with all these advances it'll be a good while 'til we see actual products. [VNUNet]

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