Toshiba on Wednesday revealed that it has developed a new design process which should greatly increase the capacity of flash memory for future storage. Known as double tunnel layer technology, it brackets a layer of silicon nanocrystals that help store memory between a pair of tunnel oxide layers that help control the flow of electricity in and out of the silicon; as the tunnels are only 1 nanometer thick, this helps move to smaller manufacturing processes -- as small as 10 nanometers -- that can pack more data in the same space, according to Toshiba. It also improves the overall speed of writing or erasing data.

Combined with improving the electrical purity of the memory, the tunnel process should allow for flash memory that stores about 100 gigabits (12.5 gigabytes) of data in a single-layer chip. The breakthrough is still early, the company says, but should be available in production hardware four flash memory generations from today's technology.

Current NAND flash memory, used in media players such as the iPod line as well as removable storage cards and solid-state hard drives, is built on a 16 gigabit process. Manufacturers typically rely on multiple chips and chip stacks to achieve larger storage levels. In recent years, flash memory generations have advanced roughly once per year and doubled capacity in each case.