KKKC 6014 - 4 Data Storage Devices

KKKC 6014: Microelectronic Devices
Data Storage Devices
Dr Iskandar Yahya
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
iskandar@eng.ukm.my
2013
Topic Outline
Topics Detail
Introduction Types of memory storage devices; comparison.
Magnetic tapes Disks, cassettes
Hard Disk Main computer data storage
ROM Read only Memory, CD, EPROM
RAM Random Access memory; S-RAM, D-RAM
Flash Flash drives
New Devices Memristor
• Objective: - To explore different memory storage devices in terms of

structure, mechanism, fabrication and applications.
• More focused on device structure and working mechanism rather than the
memory management in computer systems.
2
KC6014 - I Yahya - Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2013
Memory Device: Introduction
 Memory is the most essential part of a computer.
 Without memory there would be no computer, as we know it today.
 It is used for storing both instructions to be executed and data.
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Memory Hierarchy
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Types of memory devices
MAIN MEMORY
o Random Access Memory (RAM)
o Read Only Memory (ROM)
CACHE MEMORY
SECONDARY MEMORY
o Optical Media Devices
o Magnetic Media Devices
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Magnetic Devices
Magnetic Tapes.
 Oldest memory storage device for
computer – tape drive
 Use plastic ribbon coated with ferric oxide (Fe 2O3) to
store data. Normal rusts are iron oxide (FeO)
 Originally used for audio and video
 In computer since 1951 to store batch data

 Density of 128 bytes/inch on 8 tracks
(6 data tracks/ 1 parity/ 1 clock)
 Speed 100 in/s
 Not suitable for random access storage due to latency
and linear/serial data organization.
 Still used today for critical data offline backup media
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Magnetic Devices
Magnetic Tape Function
 Source: hyperphysics
 Tape head read/write operation:
 AC current in a coil wrapped around a ferromagnetic core
 Rings of ferromagnetic material with air gap to create magnetic field
fringe that will cross the tape in contact to magnetize (write) the
tape.
 Already magnetized tape can be passed through to the head to
read the data.
 Tape is uniform but can be magnetized locally: create
multiple strips of data for stereo data and double sided
operation
 Magnetic disks used the same principle for digital (floppy disk)
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Magnetic Devices
Hard Disk Drive, HD
 Use same principle as tape drive, but different storage medium
 Used as random access memory (RAM) of earliest computers
 Tapes drives were used as permanent memory (hard disk)
 Today HD are secondary memory, moving towards backup and
archival sector.
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Magnetic Devices
Hard Disk Drive, HD
 HD History timeline
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Magnetic Devices
Hard Disk Drive, HD
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Magnetic Devices
Hard Disk Drive, HD
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Magnetic Devices
Hard Disk Drive
 Microdrives
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Magnetic Devices
Hard Disk Drive
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Magnetic Devices
Hard Disk Drive
 Disk Terminology
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Magnetic Devices
Hard Disk Drive
 Disk Terminology
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Magnetic Devices
Hard Disk Drive
 Recording Technology
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Optical Drive
Optical Drive
 A CD can store up to 74 minutes of music, so the total amount of digital data that must be
stored on a CD is:
 44,100 samples/channel/second x 2 bytes/sample x 2 channels x 74 minutes x 60
seconds/minute = 783,216,000 bytes
 To fit more than 783 megabytes (MB) onto a disc only 4.8 inches (12 cm) in diameter
requires that the individual bytes be very small.
 A CD is about four one-hundredths (4/100) of an inch (1.2 mm) thick. Most of a CD
consists of an injection-molded piece of clear polycarbonate plastic. During
manufacturing, this plastic is impressed with microscopic bumps arranged as a single,
continuous, extremely long spiral track of data.
 A thin, reflective aluminum layer is sputtered onto the disc, covering the bumps. Then a
thin acrylic layer is sprayed over the aluminum to protect it. The label is then printed onto
the acrylic.
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Optical Drive
Optical Drive
 A CD has a single spiral track of data, circling from
the inside of the disc to the outside.
 The track is approximately 0.5 microns wide, with 1.6
microns separating one track from the next. (A micron
is a millionth of a meter.) And the bumps are even
more miniscule...
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Optical Drive
Optical Drive
 The track is approximately 0.5 microns wide, with 1.6 microns separating one track from
the next. (A micron is a millionth of a meter.) And the bumps are even more miniscule..
 The main difference between the current types of optical media is the size of the data
track, bumps and the wavelength of the laser used for reading the data.
 In a CD, each track is about 1.6 microns wide and each pit has a depth of about 0.11
micron and a minimal length of about 0.834 micron.
 A DVD shrinks this almost by half with a 0.74 micron track and a pit length of 0.4
(interestingly, the pit depth of a DVD is a bit deeper at 0.12 micron). As we already
mentioned, the 650nm wavelength (down from 780nm of a CD) allows the DVD to read
this extra information.
 HD media does even better with a pit length of about 0.2 for HD-DVD and 0.15 for Blu-
ray.
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Optical Drive
Optical Drive
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Optical Drive
Optical Drive
 Another important technical change is the size of the laser spot which had to be reduced
to read the ever smaller pits in the media.
 The original CD had a spot size of about 1.6 microns, which shrunk to 1.1 microns on a
DVD—and even further in HD (0.62 micron in HD-DVD and 0.48 micron in Blu-ray).
 CD had only one layer located in the innermost part of the 1.2mm thick polycarbonate
plastic (fairly close to the label).
 in a DVD (and HD-DVD) there’s two data surfaces located in the middle of the media.
 Blu-ray locating its data surface on the opposite side of the label.
 Although each media type has a different location for its data surface, the overall volume
taken up by the data inside the media is very small and the majority of space could be
considered wasted.
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Optical Drive
Optical Drive: CD, CD-R, CD-WR
 CD,pressing machines at the point of fabrication
 CD-R, write once using laser. the burner turns the laser writer on and off according to 1’s
and 0’s. Some describe the operation of the laser as darkening the material to encode a
zero and leaving it translucent to encode a one, although a more accurate description
might be to say that the laser changes the volume of the disc in a specific location
(“filling” the pit).
 CD-WR is based on phase-change technology. The phase-change element is a chemical
compound made out of silver, antimony, tellurium, and indium. When the compound is
heated above its melting temperature, it becomes a liquid; at its crystallization
temperature it turns into a solid. The crystalline form has less volume, so it leaves the pits
“empty” (0) while the noncrystalline form has a larger volume, so the pits are full (1).
 In blank CD-WR, all of the material in the writable area is in the crystalline form, so light
will shine through this layer to the reflective metal above and bounce back to the light
sensor. In order to write information on the disc, the burner uses its write laser, which is
more powerful and can heat the compound to its melting temperature. The melted spots
have the same function as the bumps on conventional optical media. Nonreflective areas
on the RW media indicate a zero, while areas which remain reflective indicate a one.
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Optical Drive
Optical Drive
 Since the days of the first CDs, optical media increased its capacity by 75 times (from 650
MB in a CD to 50 GB in dual-layer Blu-ray media). However the demand for more
storage space continues, and with ever larger hard drives now reaching capacities of 1TB
and beyond, an appropriate next-generation optical media is in the making.
 Mempile’s TeraDisc technology
 Mempile developed a special variant of the polymer polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA)
known as ePMMA.
 Almost entirely transparent to the specific wavelength of the laser used by its
recorder/player
 Create a media with about 200 virtual (i.e., created by the laser) layers, five microns apart,
each containing approximately 5 GB of data – 600 GB to 1 TB limit.
 Use nonlinear optics for data reading - the amount of light absorbed does not stand in
direct proportion to the amount used. Instead, a small decrease in the amount of light used
will result in a dramatic decrease in the amount of light absorbed.
 The process that Mempile uses to write and read data is called two-photon absorption and
is nonlinear in nature.
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Optical Drive
Optical Drive
 Mempile teraDisc
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Optical Drive
Optical Drive: Mempile’s TeraDisc technology
 When the laser beam is focused to a small radius on the disc, it is very easy for the
photons to excite the ePMMA molecules (chromophores), but when the radius of the beam
increases even slightly, it becomes very improbable for two photons to be absorbed by a
chromophore, so no writing or reading can occur.
 Nonlinear optics is required in this case because in a 200-layer disc, linear optics would
cause some of the light to be absorbed by the layers above the intended one resulting in
errors and loss of signal.
 In order to read data Mempile uses laser at a specific power which excites the
chromophore in a particular layer of the disc. In order to record data, a stronger light is
used which creates a different chemical reaction in the molecule
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ROM
ROM (read only memory)
• Computer memory on which data has been prerecorded.
• Information is permanently stored i.e. data stored in ROM cannot be modified,
hence known as ROM.
• Non volatile in nature.
• Stores critical programs such as the program that boots the computer.
• Used extensively in calculators and peripheral devices such as laser printers,
whose fonts are often stored in ROMs.
 Types of ROM:
1. Programmable Read-Only Memory (PROM) –
• One-time programmable ROM (OTP), can be programmed through a special
device called a PROM programmer.
• PROM can only be programmed once.
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ROM
ROM (read only memory)
2. Erasable programmable Read-Only Memory (EPROM):
• Can be erased by exposure to strong ultraviolet light, then rewritten.
• Repeated exposure to UV light will eventually wear out an EPROM.
• Some EPROM chips are factory-programmed before they are packaged;
these are effectively PROM.
3. Electrically erasable programmable Read-Only Memory (EEPROM)
• Based on a similar semiconductor structure to EPROM, but allows its entire
contents to be electrically erased, then rewritten electrically, so that they
need not be removed from the computer.
• Used in camera, MP3 player, etc.
• Writing or flashing an EEPROM is much slower.
4. Electrically Alterable Read-Only Memory (EAROM):
• A type of EEPROM that can be modified one bit at a time.
• Writing is a very slow process and again requires higher voltage.
• intended for applications that require infrequent and only partial rewriting.
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RAM
RAM (Random Access Memory)
 A RAM memory chip is an integrated circuit (IC) made of millions of transistors
and capacitors combined to create a memory cell, which represents a single bit of
data.
 In RAM, the memory cells can be assessed for information transfer from any
desired location (random access), that is, the processing of a word in memory is
the same and requires an equal amount of memory.
 It is the fastest main memory technology.
 It requires constant power to maintain the stored information, therefore, it is
volatile.
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RAM
n data input lines
K address line
Memory unit
Control read 2k words
lines N bits per word
write
n data output
lines
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RAM
 The RAM chips are of two types-
o Dynamic RAM(DRAM)
A form of volatile memory which also requires the stored information to be
periodically re-read and re-written, or refreshed, otherwise it would vanish.
o Static RAM (SRAM)
A form of volatile memory similar to DRAM with the exception that it never
needs to be refreshed.
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RAM
DRAM
 A type of RAM that stores each bit of data in a separate capacitor within an integrated
circuit.
 Since real capacitors leak charge, the information eventually fades unless the capacitor
charge is refreshed periodically.
 Its advantage is its structural simplicity: only one transistor and a capacitor are required
per bit, compared to four transistors in SRAM. This allows DRAM to reach very high
density.
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RAM
DRAM
 Types of DRAM:
 EDODRAM (Extended Data Out DRAM)
Word Line
 SDRAM (Synchronous DRAM)
 RDRAM (Rambus DRAM)
 DDRDRAM (Double Data Rate DRAM)
 Use different fabrication process
compared to the CMOS fabrication technology of CPU
 Takes less space – high density
 Used as Primary memory in computers Bit Line
 Uses one or two transistor for one memory cell
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RAM
SRAM (Static Random Access Memory)
 The term static is derived from the fact that it doesn't need to be
refreshed like dynamic RAM.
 It uses flip-flops to store binary information. Use 4 to 6 transistors
for one cell
 As it takes up more space than DRAM, it is used for specialized
Word
applications – Cache Line
 It is much easier to use and has shorter read-write cycles compared
to DRAM.
 Faster and more reliable than DRAM.
 It can give access times as low as 10 nanoseconds.
Bit
 Much more expensive than DRAM. !Bit
 Due to its high cost, SRAM is often used only as a memory cache.
 Cache memory - a special high-speed storage mechanism. It can
be either a reserved section of main memory or an independent
high-speed storage device
 Fabrication is compatible with CMOS and similar to CPU
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Non-volatile memory: Flash
Flash Drive
 Non-volatile memory - no need power to store charges
 Compared to a hard disk
 Lower latency
 Lower power
 Lighter weight, smaller size, shock resistance
 Rough comparisons for DRAM:Flash:Disk
 Cost per bit: 100:10:1
 Access latency: 1:5,000:1,000,000
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Flash Drive
 NOR flash
 Fast read (~100ns), slow writes (200usec), very slow erase (1sec)
 10K to 100K erase cycles
 Used for instruction memory in mobile systems
 NAND flash
 Denser (bits/area, ~40% of NOR), cheaper per GB
 Slow read (50usec), slow writes (200usec), slow erase (2msec)
 100K to 1M erase cycles
 Used for data storage (phones, USB keys, solid-state drives, …)
 Both types have durability issues
 Damaged after some number of write/erase cycles
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Flash Drive
 NOR and NAND comparison
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Flash Drive
 Flash Cell:
 Store bit as charge trapped in floating gate
 Charge modulates Vthof underlying transistor
 Writing/erasing by applying high/low Vcg
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Flash Drive
 Flash Cell:
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Flash Memory Cell
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Flash Drive
 Flash Chip
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Flash Drive
 Flash Operation
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Flash Drive
 Flash Issues
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Flash Drive
 Flash Application
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Flash Drive
 Beyond Flash Drives
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Memory Comparison
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Non-volatile memory: Beyond Flash
Memristor
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Memristor
 Passive elements
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Memristor
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Phase Change memory (PRAM/PCM)
 Resistive memory technology
 Characteristics
 Non-volatile
 Byte addressable
 Bit cell size: 1.5x of DRAM
 Latency: 4x DRAM for read, 12x DRAM for write
 Endurance: 108write cycles
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Uses of PRAM/PCM
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KKKC 6014: Microelectronic Devices

Data Storage Devices

• Objective: - To explore different memory storage devices in terms of

 In computer since 1951 to store batch data

n data input lines

 Uses one or two transistor for one memory cell

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