Intel, Micron Thumbs Nose at Moore's Law with 3-bit Cell NAND

"Bender: Ahhh, what an awful dream. Ones and zeroes everywhere and I thought I saw a two.

Fry: Don't worry, Bender. There's no such thing as two."

Ones and Zeros abound in the world of computers. Painful base 2 math that binds us together as brothers like some secret nerd handshake. Now all of a sudden Intel and Micron want to throw a 3rd number in there. Their insidious plot to increase NAND flash storage capacity. Wait, we like that. IM Flash Technologies is a joint venture of those two veterans in which they plan to manufacture new 3 bit per cell (3bpc) NAND memory. An increase from 2bpc which is what most current flash memory is built on, 3bpc would add 50% more storage per cell and should add a negligible amount of space and cost.

3bpc technology would improve USB flash drives as well as solid state drives. So this new technique would benefit the larger numbers of laptop computers being manufactured with SSD's. This is one of several areas that are ready to be explored in order to stave off the eventual terminus of Moore's Law. Memory density can't keep doubling forever but hopefully we have a few more decades before devices start getting bigger. Video brief on Micron's 3-bit/cell NAND after the jump.