Non Volatile Memories: Issues, Challenges and Trends for the 2000's Scenario

Main issues regarding actual Non Volatile Memory are presented, considering the market growth and the application requirements. The focus is on the evolution of the Flash memory technology, oriented to both reducing cell size and upgrading product functions. Flash will be the DRAM challenger in the next decade: the cost per bit and the performance improvements in term of access time and write transfer rate will be the main trends.