Intel, Micron claim world’s fastest NAND flash

The high speed NAND technology is aimed at consumer applications including computing, video and photography.

By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor -- Electronic News, 2/1/2008

Meant to speed access and transfer of data in devices that use silicon for storage, microprocessor giant Intel Corp along with memory leader Micron Technology Inc today announced a high speed NAND flash memory technology jointly developed and manufactured by the companies’ NAND flash joint venture, IM Flash Technologies.

Claiming the technology is five times faster than conventional NAND, the companies noted that data can be transferred in a fraction of the time for a range of consumer applications. Micron also noted that it is sampling an 8 gigabit single-level cell (SLC) high speed NAND product.

The high speed NAND technology allows for speeds up to 200 megabytes per second (Mbps) for reading data and 100 Mbps for writing data, which the companies said was possible through the use of the ONFI 2.0 specification combined with a four-plane architecture with higher clock speeds. By comparison, conventional single level cell NAND is limited to 40 Mbps for reading data and less than 20 Mbps for writing data, the companies pointed out.

Frankie Roohparvar, Micron VP of NAND development said Micron is working with an ecosystem of partners to build and optimize corresponding system technologies that take advantage of its improved performance capabilities.

“The computing market is embracing NAND-based solutions to accelerate system performance through the use of caching and solid-state drives,” reminded Pete Hazen, director of marketing for Intel’s NAND products group, in a statement. At up to 5 times the performance over conventional NAND, the high speed NAND from Intel and Micron, based on the ONFi 2.0 industry standard, is meant to foster development of new embedded solutions and removable solutions that take advantage of high–performance system interfaces, including PCIe and upcoming standards such as USB 3.0, he asserted.

Specific performance advantages of high speed NAND include the ability to read and write data anywhere between two or four times the speed when compared to conventional hard drives when high speed NAND is used in a hybrid hard drive. High speed NAND also allows a high-definition movie to be transferred five times faster than conventional NAND, the companies explained.

Further, with the pending USB 3.0 interface, Intel and Micron said high speed NAND is expected to deliver increased data transfer rates made possible by the new specification, where conventional NAND would act as the bottleneck in system performance. USB 3.0 aims for 10 times the bandwidth of current USB 2.0 solutions, or approximately 4.8 gigabits per second.

Also, as NAND continues to move into the PC platform, the companies believe the non-volatile memory host controller interface (NVMHCI) -- designed to provide a standard software programming interface allowing operating system drivers to access NAND flash memory storage in applications such as hard drive caching and solid-state drives -- can leverage high speed NAND in Intel’s turbo memory to allow for even better system performance..

Micron said its SLC high speed NAND product which is sampling now, can read data at speeds up to 200 Mbps and can write data at speeds up to 100 Mbps and was designed on the 50 nm node.

Mass production of Micron’s SLC high speed NAND is expected to begin in the second half of the year.

Micron added that it expects to unveil additional ONFI 2.0-derived NAND products in the next year.

Last November, Micron made it clear it wants a bigger piece of the NAND market when it marked its entry into the solid state drive market with 3 form factors.