On the Capacity of Flash Memories

Flash memories are the most widely used type of nonvolatile electronic memories. Compared to magnetic recording and optical recording, flash memories have the unique property that their cell levels, which represent data, are programmed using an iterative procedure that monotonically shifts each cell level upward toward its target value. In this paper, the authors study the capacity of flash memories to store data. They explore the relationship among their capacity, programming precision and programming time. The study is focused on the capacity of single cells, and an optimal programming algorithm is presented.