14 DAY TRIAL // The Open NAND Flash Interface working group, ONFI for short, has just announced that it has finalized the third version of its NAND Flash standard which promises to deliver improved transfer speed rates as well as significant cost reductions when compared to ONFI 2.2.
The performance increase is achieved by using a non-volatile DDR2 interface which raises the maximum transfer rate per channel supported from 200MB/sec to an impressive 400MB/sec.
According to ONFI, the increased performance can be used in order to develop faster SSDs and enables next generation NAND controllers to achieve transfer speeds similar to that of today's drives by using half the number of channels.
This should translate into lower drive prices and could even help SSD makers to build even more compact high-capacity solid state storage solutions.
Furthermore, the new standard also brings support for lower I/O signaling voltage and on-die termination, which improves signal integrity and enables faster transfer speeds.
“ONFI 3.0 doubles the bus speed which is critical to delivering high-performance solid state storage solutions across all compute application needs, especially for given capacity footprints as NAND die density and page sizes increase,” said Steffen Hellmold, vice president of business development for SandForce.
“Furthermore the innovative measures taken to reduce pin count will help drive system improvements in cost and complexity.
“We are proud supporters of the ONFI specification and are working on delivering an SSD processor solution fully embracing this new interface capability in 2012,” concluded the company's rep.
Next to SandForce, Micron, Intel, Phison and Spansion have also expressed their support for ONFI 3.0, but they didn't mention when the first products to support this standard are to be expected.
Right now, high-performance solid state drives address multiple NAND channels simultaneously in order to break free of the speed limitations imposed by ONFI 2.x.