Many people hesitated splashing out on the iPod touch when they saw the somewhat feeble memory size of the multimedia players – maxing out at just 8gb. Apple ditched the hard drive in favor of flash memory for the new player, and in an effort to price it competitively, couldn’t easily add much more memory.

But we knew it wouldn’t be long before one of the industry giants made an announcement regarding flash memory technology, given the breakneck speed at which this field develops.

That announcement came from Samsung this week. They’ve just introduced what they are trumpeting as the world’s most powerful chip, which can be used to make flash memory. The 64 gigabit chips could be incorporated into multimedia players, allowing them to hold the equivalent of up to 80 DVDs. They also claim that a single chip could hold as many as 18,000 songs – very impressive, I’m sure you’ll agree.

There are currently two types of flash memory in production – NAND and NOR. Samsung’s new chip is of the NAND type, and when compared with NOR, has higher storage capabilities and faster speeds.

Combining 16 of these chips would produce a memory capacity of 128GB, providing real competition with hard drives.

Toshiba are also developing similar technology. Both Toshiba and Samsung are aiming to release products in 2009.