MOBILE DEVICES ARE starting to need more and more internal memory and as great as being able to fit a 16GB or even 32GB memory card into your mobile device is, there are still times when you need to install applications on the internal memory of your smartphone. There are two major issues related to this, cost and space inside the device. Samsung appears to be at least one step closer to solving the second of these problems with its new 8 Gigabit OneNAND Flash memory.
Please do note that we’re talking Gigabits here and not Gigabytes and as such each of these new 30nm-class chips can store up to 1GB of data. Samsung doesn’t specify the exact manufacturing process, but rather specifies that the new chips are fabbed on a process scale that’s somewhere between 30nm and 39nm. Samsung is relying on SLC NAND Flash memory, which will make its new OneNAND chips more expensive than some competitive alternatives, but with the added benefit of vastly improved performance and presumably improved life span.
Samsung claims that a single OneNAND chip offers read speeds of up to 70MB/s which is said to be over four times as fast as traditional NAND Flash with read speeds of about 17MB/s. The new OneNAND Flash chips are also quite power frugal at 1.8V and Samsung will also offer smaller capacities of 4 Gigabit and 2 Gigabit. The press release states that Samsung will be able to “raise productivity by 40 percent over its previous 40nm-class design” which at least long term should mean more affordable Flash memory.
Samsung’s OneNAND chips should appear in the next generation of smartphones and should hopefully help to speed up many of these devices when it comes to accessing internal storage memory leading to overall improved performance in a similar way that SSDs have boosted the performance of desktop and notebook PC’s. Samsung’s OneNAND is currently sampling to its customers and volume production should kick off at the end of this month.S|A
Lars-Göran Nilsson
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