Samsung Licenses OneNAND Flash Memory to STMicroelectronics

Samsung Electronics announced that it has licensed its OneNAND flash memory to semiconductor manufacturer, STMicroelectronics, to help meet rising demand in various applications including the mobile marketplace.

Samsung's OneNAND architecture uses NAND for the core, and SRAM and logic elements to emulate a NOR Flash interface. OneNAND provides a data read speed of 108 MB/s - 4 times faster than conventional memory, and a data write speed of 10 MB/s - 46 times faster than multi-level-cell NOR Flash memory. The enhanced read and write speeds can lead to a significant performance improvement in boot-time and application launch-time in mobile handsets and Non-Volatile Cache for PC applications.

"Samsung welcomes STMicroelectronics' decision to support the projected strong continued growth of the world's highest performing flash memory," said Yun-Ho Choi, senior vice president of Samsung Electronics' Semiconductor Business' Flash Solution Team. "As a result of STMicroelectronics' licensing move, handset and other platform designers can more easily specify OneNAND in an expanding range of mobile applications."

STMicroelectronics will support Samsung's OneNAND starting early 2007.