Mannerisms

In 1988, Intel launched the 28F256 the first flash memory chip and spawned the now huge flash memory industry.

It was not the first time Intel had done that. In fact the company was saved by a memory chip. Intel was a struggling start-up, running out of money, when it launched the 1103 1K MOS DRAM in 1971.

"There was a general feeling that if the 1103 failed Intel would not make it, and might not get another chance", said Intel's then director of marketing Ed Gelbach.

In 1972 almost all Intel's revenues came from the chip.

"It allowed us to expand in a vacuum", said co-founder Gordon Moore, referring to the lack on any competition to the 1103 for a number of years.

In fact 1971 was a vintage year for Intel's product launches. That year Intel also launched the first EPROM and the first microprocessor, the 4004.

Whether not Intel's phase change memory will spawn a huge new industry is anyone's guess. But people expect traditional floating point flash to run out of steam at around the 32nm process generation, and phase change, along with MRAM, is seen as a replacement non-volatile memory technology for when floating point flash .becomes unmanufacturable.

At 128Mbit, Intel's pahse change memory is way behind the 8Gbit densities of leading edge floating point flash. No one knows if it will yield well in mass production, or if it can be shrunk onto a 50nm process and lower, or even if Intel will give a memory chip access to its most advanced processes.

But, somehow, it's a great thing to see Intel doing what it did so well in its glory days - bringing out something which is pretty amazing.