Flash memory combines a number of older technologies, with lower cost,

lower power consumption and small size made possible by advances in

microprocessor technology. The memory storage was based on earlier EPROM
and EEPROM technologies. These had limited capacity, were slow for both
reading and writing, required complex high-voltage drive circuitry, and could
be re-written only after erasing the entire contents of the chip.

Hardware designers later developed EEPROMs with the erasure region broken
up into smaller "fields" that could be erased individually without affecting the
others. Altering the contents of a particular memory location involved
copying the entire field into an off-chip buffer memory, erasing the field,
modifying the data as required in the buffer, and re-writing it into the same
field. This required considerable computer support, and PC-based EEPROM
flash memory systems often carried their own dedicated microprocessor
system. Flash drives are more or less a miniaturized version of this.

The development of high-speed serial data interfaces such as USB made

semiconductor memory systems with serially accessed storage viable, and
the simultaneous development of small, high-speed, low-power
microprocessor systems allowed this to be incorporated into extremely
compact systems. Serial access requires far fewer electrical connections for
the memory chips than does parallel access, which has simplified the
manufacture of multi-gigabyte drives.

Computers access modern flash memory systems very much like hard disk
drives, where the controller system has full control over where information is
actually stored. The actual EEPROM writing and erasure processes are,
however, still very similar to the earlier systems described above.

Many low-cost MP3 players simply add extra software and a battery to a
standard flash memory control microprocessor so it can also serve as a music
playback decoder. Most of these players can also be used as a conventional
flash drive, for storing files of any type