Boise (ID) - Intel and Micron are first to announce NAND flash memory chips using the new high-speed interface specified by the Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) group: The new memory promises five times the read/write performance of flash memory devices available on the market today.
According to Micron high-speed NAND flash memory is currently sampling in SLC 8 Gb units as well as in stacked 16 Gb and 32 Gb versions and achieves the full spec as defined by ONFI. The memory reaches read speeds of 200 MB/s and write speeds of 100 MB/s, up from 40 MB/s and 20 MB/s in today’s NAND flash memory.
Micron claims that this performance increase will speed up hybrid hard drives by a factor of 2 - 4x, movie transfers in digital cameras should get much faster, especially when the USB 3.0 interface becomes available. And even Intel’s Turbo Memory may get another shot to show its potential.
In contrast to current NAND flash memory, the new high-speed memory uses a bi-directional source synchronous DQS, a "scalable" DDR data I/O interface, improved signaling and pin capacitance.
Mass-production of high-speed NAND flash is scheduled to begin sometime in the second half of this year.
