Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology

In digital computing, memories store data used and produced by microprocessors, and as such, memories together with microprocessors form the backbone of virtually all computing hardware, whether it be in mobile phones, personal computers, data centers, supercomputers, automobiles, or home appliances. Flash memory and dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) are two major semiconductor memories, which even lay people may be familiar with from the “storage” and “RAM” specs of their computers or mobile phones. Now flash memory integrates hundreds of billions of transistors per chip and DRAM integrates tens of billions of transistors and capacitors per chip. These functional superstructures in tiny silicon chips are one of the most complex human inventions with great social and economic importance. Both memory types are used in a computer but with distinct roles. Flash memory is a long-term storage for all data (including instructions)？？photos, videos, music, documents, operating system, applications, etc. Also known as solid-state drive (SSD), flash memory came of age over the past two decades as a major alternative to the magnetic hard disk drive (HDD)¹. In contrast, DRAM loads, from flash memory, a subset of data that are actively used by on-going computing in microprocessors.