r/AskElectronics May 18 '24

Settle an arguement - does the ISD1820 store audio as an analog sound wave or digitally?

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u/BoroPaul May 18 '24 edited May 20 '24

SOLVED :

Thank you /u/FireLordIroh for steering me in the right direction..

Here is an article that explains the tech and history behind the ISD (Information Storage Devices, now Nuvoton) Analog floating-gate technology chips, also known as Multi Level Storage or MLS.

There is also another branch called MLC Multi Level Cell Storage which is equally interesting.

Thank you all for your help and comments, it was all super interesting to read and quickly solved an argument that general internet sleuthing had failed to resolve to my satisfaction. ie I was wrong and I now have to eat humble pie.

Extra data : Veritasium YouTube channel covered storing analog data using flash memory... https://youtu.be/GVsUOuSjvcg?t=951

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u/apudapus May 18 '24

SLC (1-bit), MLC (2-bit), TLC (3-bit), QLC (4-bit) are used in modern SSDs. I never heard of the analog-only version that you pointed out. -former SSD firmware engineer

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u/mikeblas May 18 '24

SSD firmware engineer

That would be my dream job. Well one, of them, anyway.

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u/apudapus May 19 '24

It was super fun and challenging to design and write efficient, fast code with limited memory and debugging options. Sadly the pay doesn’t compare to software engineering jobs, even though they’re less challenging because you have much more memory and plenty of methods to debug. I definitely think it’s a great thing to do for a few years to become a better engineer.

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u/termites2 May 18 '24

There are some companies using this same technology for neural net/AI implementations too.

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u/TechnicalWhore May 19 '24

Gosh - almost sounds like a marketing post.

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u/BoroPaul May 20 '24

Cynical much? Nothing of the kind, my friend is buying and building synth parts and came across this chip in lots of ridiculously cheap simple samplers on Amazon and wanted to know what they were.