Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. yesterday announced that it has developed the world’s highest density NAND* flash, a 16Gigabit (that’s 2GB) NAND memory device using 50nm technology. NAND is the most widely used memory for multi-feature mobile applications.
The new 16Gb memory device should accelerate further expansion of the NAND flash market across mobile and portable digital applications as an alternative to mini-HDDs (hard disk drives) and even HDDs for laptops.
Development of the 16Gb NAND flash memory makes it easier to store massive amounts of data on small portable devices. Availability of Samsung’s 16Gb NAND will allow mobile and portable application designers to use memory cards with densities up to 32GB by combining up to 16 such devices on a single card. A 32GB density translates into the ability to store either 200 years of an average daily newspaper, 8000 MP3 music files (680 hours) or 20 DVD resolution movies (32 hours of high resolution video footage) on a mobile device.
The cell size of Samsung’s new fingernail-sized flash has been reduced 25% from that of the 8Gb NAND memory developed last year using 60-nanometer technology. The new flash memory boasts the industry’s smallest cell size—0.00625 square microns per bit. The 16Gb device holds 16.4 billion functional transistors, each measuring one two-thousandths the thickness of a piece of human hair.
Samsung plans to begin mass producing its 16Gb NAND flash in the second half of 2006.
*There are two types of NAND Flash memory architectures: Single-Level Cell (SLC) and Multi-Level Cell (MLC). SLC NAND Flash is the higher performing technology that is used to enable streaming video and Internet capability in handheld electronics such as 3G cell phones, PDAs, digital still / video cameras and MP3 players, etc. MLC NAND Flash is appropriate for short-term, price-sensitive applications, such as voice recorders, where streaming video is not required.
Source: BUSINESS WIRE
Link: The Samsung SLC NAND Flash Advantage
