Most flash modules fail after being written to and erased about 10, 000 times, but Macronix found that the tired memory could be restored by baking it for extended periods of time.
Macronix will be presenting the technology at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting next week, but project deputy director Hans-Ting Lue wouldn't say when the company plans on taking the technology to market.
By building heating into the flash memory design, Macronix thinks that flash memory cells could last 100 M write cycles rather than the 10 thousand or so cycles possible today with MLC flash memory.
Despite the looming threat of being replaced by phase-change memory, contemporary memory modules aren't quite ready to be shown the door -- engineers at Macronix have found a way to revive spent NAND flash cells.
Flash memory is being used as an acceleration layer in many enterprise applications and recent announcements by Macronix indicate that the write life endurance for flash memory cells can be increased considerably by locally exposing NAND flash memory cells to a high heat (about 800 C).