Freescale, the recently outsourced semiconductor division of Motorola, is working on a design that could extend the lifecycle of Flash. It could, with the help of the silicon-based nanocrystals, double Flash's bit density. The company introduced a chip using the technology in July 2003.

"Nanocrystals are not completely new memory technology. I would call it an extension or an improvement of Flash. It makes the scaling of Flash easier," says Dale Weisman of Freescale. "In particular, it allows us to lower production costs by 10 to 15 percent with a significantly less complex production process." Performance and reliability are said to compare with current Flash, with identical functionality. He says Freescale and Motorola have put a good ten years of research into this technology, and are planning for mass production.

The term "nanotechnologies" often comes up in connection with discussions of "nanocrystals" and "forecasts for Flash memory",. And actually, all manufacturers are planning "nanotechnologies" for Flash. However, every manufacturer defines this term differently. Intel, for example, uses the definition of the U.S. government, whereby all structures under 100 nanometers can be referred to as nanotechnology. According to Lai, Intel is already "deep into nanotechnology" because it is already producing Flash and processors with a 90 nanometer feature size.

Nolan of Nanomarkets, however, doesn't accept this definition: "Here nanotechnology is reduced to the process of scaling. However, one of the significant components is that development is done on a level genuinely influenced by quantum technology and quantum effects." This is how it is seen at Infineon as well: "Nanotechnology begins wherever a system can be produced in the atomic area and the properties can be consciously affected. Today we scale down, but we aren't building anything positive up. Thus we are approaching it from the other end," explains Kücher. Even at Infineon, however, it is believed that Flash can be expanded with nanotechnology: "But it is still doubtful whether we can still call it Flash."