Paper Title: Breaking through Impenetrable Barriers - The Key to the Evolution of Solid State

Paper Abstract: NAND flash is now the dominant semiconductor storage technology. What made it so special and might limit its future at smaller process dimensions (such as 10 or 7 nm)?. The basic underlying concept is tunneling, the passage of electrons through a seemingly impenetrable substrate. Two FMS Lifetime Achievement Award recipients, Eli Harari and Simon Sze, harnessed the effect many years ago and laid the foundation for the mobile data storage revolution. Today it is not only the key to 3D flash, but it is also a basic mechanism in other solid state memory technologies. This talk will describe how tunneling works as well as the origins of current market implementations of NVM. An understanding of tunneling will give designers insight into the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches. It will also help them see which applications make sense, and evaluate the future likelihood of success for candidates in today's world of ever-smaller dimensions.

Paper Author: Andy Walker, VP of Product, Spin Transfer Technologies

Author Bio: Andy Walker is VP Product at MRAM startup Spin Transfer Technologies (STT). He focuses on turning STT's leading-edge technology into marketable products. Before joining STT, he was founder/CEO of Schiltron, where he developed new approaches to ultra-high-endurance 3-D flash memory. He also has worked for Cypress Semiconductor, Artisan Components, and Philips Research Laboratories. He holds over 40 US patents, and is the author or co-author of over 30 academic articles. He has also given presentations at many technical conferences, including SNIA's Persistent Memory Summit. He is a recognized industry expert in 3-D flash memory, thin-film transistor physics, and solid state memory technologies in general. He earned a PhD from the Technical University of Eindhoven (The Netherlands).