Toshiba Develops Chip to Replace Floppy, Hard Discs

TOKYO — Toshiba Corp. said today that it has developed a new thumbnail-size memory chip that may replace floppy and hard discs within three years and drastically reduce the size of computer systems.

Toshiba officials said the breakthrough device is the “world’s first 4-megabit electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) chip--the highest level of integration ever attained in this kind of memory device.”

They said the large-capacity chip provides an ultra-fast readout time of 1.6 microseconds, more than 1,000 times faster than floppy discs. It takes one microsecond to erase or program data, equivalent to or faster than conventional chips of that type, they said.

Toshiba said the new chip may replace much larger computer memory storage mediums like floppy or hard discs in three years.

It also has the advantage of not requiring any rotary-drive mechanism. This may lead to sharp reductions in the size of computer systems, the company said.