2016•Unpublished venueRequires access
Non‐Volatile Storage
Eben Upton, Jeff Duntemann, Ralph Roberts, Tim Mamtora, Ben Everard
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Abstract
The Raspberry Pi uses a Secure Digital (SD) format flash card for its primary non-volatile storage, including both software and data. Perhaps the single most important advance in non-volatile storage in the last 30 years has been the development of reliable, low-cost flash memory. Flash became cheap enough to use in mass-storage devices. Flash memory fall into four general categories: flash cards (SD, Multimedia Card (MMC), memory stick, compact flash); USB thumb drives; embedded flash (embedded MMC (eMMC), Universal Flash Storage (UFS)); and flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs) that are designed to replace conventional hard drives. Flash devices have broad structural similarities to dynamic random access memory (DRAM). DRAM stores data as charge in microscopic capacitors attached to metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) transistors. Flash-based solid-state drives are coming into their own, with 2-TB units now widely available. They're still expensive but if history is any guide, that price will come down quickly in the near future.