Samsung Electronics, one of the world’s largest makers of electronics components, on Monday introduced a new technology that the company says will eventually replace NOR flash memory due to greater performance, reliability and cheaper manufacturing.

The South-Korea-based electronics maker demonstrated its first working 512Mb prototype of phase-change random Access Memory (PRAM) at a special event and said that the actual products will become available as early as in 2008, 1.5 – 2 years from now, whereas during the next decade, Samsung claims, PRAM is expected to be the main memory device to replace high density NOR flash.

PRAM can rewrite data without having to first erase data previously accumulated, it is effectively 30-times faster than conventional flash memory, according to Samsung. Additionally, PRAM is also expected to have at least 10 times the life span of flash memory.

Samsung explained that it had designed the cell size of its PRAM to be only half the size of NOR flash. Moreover, according to the company, it requires 20% fewer process steps to produce than those used in the manufacturing of NOR flash memory.

“Samsung’s new PRAM was developed by adopting the use of vertical diodes with the three-dimensional transistor structure that it now uses to produce DRAM. The new PRAM has the smallest 0.0467 square micron cell size of any working memory that is free of inter-cell noise, allowing virtually unlimited scalability,” a statement by Samsung reads.

NOR flash is the memory technology of choice for the volume mainstream of the cellular-phone market segment. According to industry research firm iSuppli, 92.8% of the embedded flash memory shipping in handsets is NOR flash memory.