The Engineering Puzzle of Storing Trillions of Bits in your Smartphone / SSD using Quantum Mechanics

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 10:22:20 +0000

It's a puzzle as to how your smartphone or the solid-state drive in your laptop can store gigabytes to terabytes of data by the click of a button! It's amazing that your devices work flawlessly, and the information doesn't leak out. In this video, we'll learn how scientists and engineers use quantum mechanics to store this information reliably. We'll take a look on the inside of the 3D NAND technology, and see an application of quantum mechanics- specifically quantum tunneling.

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0:35 - Where is the storage microchip in your Smartphone?
1:12 - Inside the memory storage microchip.
2:08 - Exploring the walls of the charge trap.
3:00 - Writing information to a memory cell.
3:48 - How Quantum Mechanics is applied to writing to a memory cell.
5:30 - Dimensions of a memory cell.
6:24 - Memory cells DO lose their data... over time.
6:49 - Wrapping up

Written, animated, and edited- Teddy Tablante
Twitter: @teddytablante
Voice Over- Phil Lee

This video is part of a series that intends to thoroughly explain how SSDs, and more specifically how VNAND works. These are the episodes in the series:
1) [18min] Overview on how SSDs / VNAND / Smartphone storage works.
2) [3min] Quick/Abridged episode of the overview
3) [7.5min] Writing to a memory cell using Quantum Mechanics
4) Reading from a charge trap flash memory cell.
5) How strings of memory cells work (details on a stack of memory cells)
6) How a massive array of memory cells are organized. (Terabit Cell Array Transistor, TCAT)
7) SSD Architecture
8) How is VNAND manufactured?

Key Branches from this video are: Microchips, CPUs, Integrated Circuits, SSDs

Erratum:

Animation built using Blender 2.82a https://www.blender.org/
Post with Adobe Premiere Pro

Book References:
Aritome, Seiichi. (2015). NAND flash memory technologies. IEEE Press Series on Microelectronic Systems. Wiley. [2nd most useful resource]

Cai, Yu et al. (2013) Threshold Voltage Distribution in MLC NAND Flash Memory: Characterization Analysis, and Modeling. 2013 Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition. IEEE.

Micheloni, Rino. Marelli, Alessia. Eshghi, Kam. (2018) Inside solid state drives (SSDs) Second edition. Springer Series in Advanced Microelectronics Volume 37. Springer. [Most useful resource]

Micheloni, Rino. (2017) Solid-state-drives (SSDs) Modeling, Simulation tools & strategies. Springer Series in Advanced Microelectronics Volume 58. Springer

Micheloni, Rino (2016) 3D flash memories. Springer.

Pierret, Robert F. (1996) Semiconductor Device Fundamentals. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

Prince, Betty. (2014) Vertical 3D Memory Technologies. Wiley

Internet References:
Crisp, Simon. (29/01/2018) Samsung SSD860 PRO 4TB SSD Review. Kitguru.net
https://www.kitguru.net/compon....ents/ssd-drives/simo (Accessed 07/05/2020)

Mellor, Chris. (28/07/2016) QLC flash istricky stuff to make and use, so here's a primer. TheRegister.co.uk
https://www.theregister.co.uk/....2016/07/28/qlc_flash (Accessed 07/05/2020)

Samsung Website. Samsung 1TB Details and Specifications www.samsung.com
https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/solid-state-drives/ssd-860-evo-2-5--sata-iii-1tb-mz-76e1t0b-am/ (Accessed 07/05/2020)

Shah, Dhiram. (27/02/2019) Samsung Begins Mass Production of Frist 512 GB eUFS3.0 for Next-Generation Mobile Devices. Fareastgizmos.com
https://fareastgizmos.com/smar....tphone/samsung-begin (Accessed 07/05/2020)

Wikipedia contributors. "Charge Trap Flash." "Flash Memory." "Floating-gate Mosfet." "Samsung Electronics." "Solid-State drive." "Solid-state storage." "Three-dimensional integrated circuit." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Visited May, 2020

Yoon, Alex. (15/02/2018) Understanding Memory, An inside look at different memory types and how they work. Semiengineering.com
https://semiengineering.com/wh....ats-really-happening (Accessed 07/05/2020)