Samsung Develops First 60-Nanometer 8-GB NAND Flash Memory
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Samsung&#39;s advanced 60nm process technology is two thousandths the width of a piece of human hair and achieves approximately 30 percent reduction in cell size over the 70nm 4Gb NAND Flash memory developed last year.
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The Motley Fool - Today's flash memory chips store as many as 32 billion bits on a single chip. It's an impressive achievement, but manufacturers only have a few more years of squeezing those components into ever-smaller configurations before the whole process becomes either too expensive or physically impossible. That's why today's news from IBM (NYSE: IBM - News), Macronix (Nasdaq: MXIC - News), and Qimonda (NYSE: QI - News), announcing the creation of a new "phase-change" material that could lead to the development of more powerful memory chips, is a big deal.
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Seoul, South Korea-based Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has begun shipping a 512Mbit GDDR2 memory device, one it claims is the most advanced graphics double-data-rate synchronous DRAM available.
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Breaking the speed barrier of traditional flash memory, Intel and Micron Thursday announced a new flash memory architecture that increases the data transfer rates in consumer electronics by cutting the bottlenecks affecting conventional NAND flash memory.IM Flash Technologies, a joint venture between Intel and Micron, has developed an 8Gb SLC (single-level cell) high-speed NAND chip which can reach read speeds up to 200MBps and write speeds of up to 100MBps, which could mean faster data transfer between devices like solid-state drives and video cards.&quot;With the popularity of digital video cameras and video-on-demand services, high speed NAND can enable a high-definition movie to be transferred five times faster than conventional NAND,&quot; said Kirstin Bordner, a spokeswoman for Micron.Conventional NAND flash memory from Micron and other players currently transfer data at read rates of 40MBps, with write rates of about 20MBps.The speed improvements resulted from changes made to the NAND architecture and improvements in the read-write circuitry, Bordner said.This chip&#39;s architecture achieves the speed defined in the ONFI (Open NAND Flash Interface) 2.0 specification, according to Micron. Micron was one of the founders of the ONFI Working Group in 2006, and other member companies include Hynix Semiconductor, Intel, Phison Electronics, Sony and STMicroelectronics.Micron is now sampling the high-speed NAND component, with mass production expected to commence in the second half of 2008, the company said.Products based on the ONFI 2.0 specification have been under development and were expected, said Joseph Unsworth, a principal analyst at Gartner.&quot;It wasn&#39;t anything that wasn&#39;t expected. We knew that it was coming out,&quot; Unsworth said.The technology could see an immediate future for use in video and high-end photography devices that require flash memory with quick transfer speeds and reliable data retention, Unsworth said. However, it will be priced at a premium and only multimedia enthusiasts looking for high-performance flash memory would be willing buyers, Unsworth said.As prices stabilize, it will reach mainstream devices like MP3 players and digital cameras, but that could be a long time away, he said.The new flash technology from Micron and Intel could also face competition from Samsung and Toshiba, the world&#39;s top flash vendors, who combined represent 60 percent of products supplied in the NAND flash market. The two companies last year signed an agreement to share specifications to develop faster and more robust NAND interfaces, Unsworth said.While both factions will ultimately deliver high-performance flash technology to consumers, they need to unite under one banner to ease the development of high-speed flash technology. The market is split in half, and it needs one standard voice to simplify the development of flash memory for manufacturers, Unsworth said.
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(InfoWorld) - Solid-state disks (SSDs) are fastÂ becoming popularÂ as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives but they are not all alike, said South Korea's Mtron. SSDs use flash memory rather than magnetic storage, which means faster reading and writing of data, lower power consumption, and zero noise. They've been around for several years although it is only recently, after flash memory chip prices fell, that they have become practical for use in laptop computers. Major PC makers are starting to offer them as options in some laptop models, but consumers looking to SSDs for a performance boost should pay close attention to the specifications, said Sean Roh, assistant manager of the marketing department at Mtron . The company, which is based near Seoul, makes its own SSD that it claims is faster than any other on the market. It offers a sustained read speed of 100MBps and a sustained write speed of 80MBps, he said. By comparison, SandiskÂ reports a read speed of 67MBps and a write speed of 47MBps for its recently announced 64GB SSD and Samsung ElectronicsÂ said its SSD reads at 56MBps and writes at 32MBps. The faster speeds are possible thanks to the use of a custom-designed drive control chip. In a demonstration at the SEK show, which opened in Seoul on Wednesday, the company had five competing 2.5-inch drives and its own 2.5-inch drive hooked up to a personal computer running benchmarking software. The test appeared to confirm that the Mtron drive performed at around the speeds claimed and also beat out the competition. Among the competing drives, all of which had labels to cover the manufacturer's name, the slowest read data at about 28MBps and the fastest at about 96MBps, while write speeds ranged from 17.6MBps to 68MBps (the fastest read and write speeds were not on the same drive). The Mtron drive hit a read speed of 97MBps and a write speed of 72Mbps in the test, the benchmark software reported. Mtron, which is about three years old, has already signed up distributors in some markets and is looking to sell its 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives to PC makers for use in their machines. It isn't planning to offer the drives direct to consumers. Â
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An innovative new memory technology that promises to replace flash in a wide range of products has been unveiled by IBM and two partners who claim their phase-change technology is 500 times faster than flash and draws roughly half the power.
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Samsung Electronics is shipping hybrid hard-disk drives that mix conventional magnetic storage with flash memory. The company claims that the system delivers a 70% to 90% cut in power consumption thanks to its ability to use NAND for caching data.
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South Koreaâs Samsung Electronics has developed the worldâs fastest computer memory chip for graphics applications. Samsung said the 512-megabit graphics double-data-rate (GDDR) memory chip is the most
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Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory  technology, announced today that it has begun mass producing the industry's  first 1Gigabit (Gb) DDR2 DRAM (dynamic random access memory) using 60  nanometer (nm)--class process technology.
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(InfoWorld) - IntelÂ  threw down a gantlet today by entering the solid-state drive market with its first NAND flash memory product. The Intel Z-U130 Value Solid-State Drive represents a challenge to Samsung Corp., which is the world's largest producer of NAND flash memory for hardware and gadgets such as USB flash drives. The Z-U130 comes in capacities ranging from 1GB to 8GB and uses industry-standard USB interfaces, the company stated in a press release. The flash drive comes with reads rates of 28MB/sec. and write speeds of 20MB/sec. Intel expectsÂ its solid-state disk to be used in everything from servers and PCs toÂ gaming consoles. Intel's first entry into the solid-state disk market is still four times smaller in capacity compared withÂ otherÂ industry-leadingÂ products from companies such as SanDisk Corp. SanDiskÂ announced aÂ 32GB solid-state disk product in January (see "SanDisk shows solid-state drive "). But Intel also touts extreme reliability numbers, saying theÂ Z-U130 has an average mean time between failure of 5 million hours compared with SanDisk, which toutsÂ an MTBF of 2 million hours. Intel touted solid-state disk as a faster storage alternative that speeds through common PC or embedded application operations such as locating boot code, operating systems and commonly accessed libraries. It said its productÂ offers "cost-effective," high-performance storage with advantages over hard disk drives or removable Universal Serial Bus storage devices. Samsung recently announced its first hybrid drive, which uses NAND flash memory with spinning disk. That drive offers capacities of 80GB, 120GB and 160GB, along with 4GB of flash memory for caching data (see "Samsung ships its first hybrid disk drive"). Solid-state drives deliver faster boot times, embedded code storage, rapid data access and low-power storage alternatives for value PCs, routers, servers, and gaming and industrial applications. "Solid-state drive technology offers many benefits over traditional hard disk drives, including improved performance and reliability," said Randy Wilhelm, vice president and general manager of Intel's NAND products group. The Z-U130 solid-state drive is the company's first product in what Intel said will be a family ofÂ  value solid-state drives. The Z-U130 comes in 1GB, 2GB, 4GB and 8GB densities. Intel said it has already made deals with server, notebook and PC manufacturers to include the Z-U130. The company's solid-state disk will also be used in Intel-embedded products for routers and point of sale terminals, it noted.
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Shared research produces fast, tiny memory ideal for consumer devices.
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The 0.85-inch diameter drive is a candidate for cell phone storage, but can the product compete against flash memory?
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Spansion and Fujitsu today announced an entirely new Flash memory family designed to reduce costs and dramatically simplify system design of Flash-enabled consumer electronics, PC peripherals, and in-cabin automotive electronics.
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Samsung Electronics Co. said Tuesday it has developed a more advanced flash memory chip that will allow increased data storage in digital products such as music players.
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SOUTH Korea &#39;s Samsung Electronics, the world&#39;s largest memory chipmaker, is to invest $US24 billion ($31 billion) in new chip production lines over the next six years.
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In a research breakthrough that has broken records in the semiconductor industry, scientists at Infineon Technologies AG have built the worldâs smallest non-volatile flash memory cell.
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HDD alternative TDK has followed Samsung and launched a hard drive replacement based on NAND Flash memory. The product, which is currently available in sample quantities, was announced by the company last week.â¦