Samsung, a world leader in storage technologies, has brought a first-to-market gem out. A 16GBit Flash Memory chip, designed to be not only able used in standalone, but also in parallel configurations up to 16x16 in size. That gives you a flash memory card with 32 Gigabytes of storage space, narrowing the gap between mechanical hard drives and flash drives. The fingernail-sized chip is thought to give Samsung an edge in the portable market. Seagate is still going full steam on their traditional hard drives as well, though, as perpendicular storage promises to see many companies releasing hard drives with vastly more storage density than they are capable of today.

Gigabytes of data in the palm of your hand. It is happening, and as NAND continues to become more refined and priced to market, it will probably replace mechanical drives in field use.