There are pros and cons to everything. And yes, we mean everything. When it comes to flash memory, there's plenty of positives to choose from, however, the storage device's shelf life could be see some room for improvement. That is where Macronix, a company based out of Taiwan, may have come up with a solution.
Macronix has figured that by applying a heat of around 480 degrees for a couple hours, you can stretch the life span of your flash memory. If you're thinking that this approach sounds pretty crazy, you would be correct. That's why the company is searching for alternative approaches, including creating a chip with on-board heaters that would dole out "a super blast of heat (about 1,400 degrees) every now and then." By doing so, it is believed that this method "could give chips a lifespan of roughly 100 million cycles, orders of magnitude more than the current highs of 100,000 to 1 million."
[via Gizmodo]
