Flex-OneNAND From Samsung

In the flash products industry there have been basically two major types of memories, the Single Level Cell (SLC) based memories and the Multi Level Cell (MLC) based memories. Both of these are currently being used in all kinds of flash memory based products from memory cards to portable memory devices, to hard drives and a lot of Consumer Electronics (CE).

Up until now, these two types of memories have had different uses and targeted different product categories because of their specifications. SLC based memory products have a longer life span, more read/write cycles and run at a higher speed. MLC based memory products are the opposite of SLC ones, but are cheaper to produce and a lot of applications do not require to run at particular high speeds and manufacturing costs sometimes prevent companies from using SLC products.

Samsung took definitive action in this case and announced at its annual Mobile Solution Forum in Taipei the development of a new fusion semiconductor, by now the third generation of semiconductors, which allows CE designers to use both SLC and MLC flash memories in the same device for the first time. In order to ensure the functionality of the design, the Flex-OneNAND fusion semiconductor is delivered with a new piece of software from Samsung.

The semiconductor is made out of a single silicon chip, and implementations such as single-die integration of both SLC and MLC memories will be possible, thus allowing for greater flexibility in memory utilization and more uses for the CE that will be designed based on this technology. Samsung plans to begin the production of the 4Gb Flex-OneNAND next month.