Abstract

Flex-OneNAND and SSD Make Mobile Devices Lighter and Smaller

With the explosive growth of the mobile communications and digital consumer electronics markets, it has become a trend for mobile communication products to possess various kinds of IT functions. To satisfy the growing demand for data transferring between mobile phones and digital consumer electronics, Samsung launched a series of mobile memory chip solutions at the Mobile Solution Forum in 2007.

Samsung expects Fusion Magic to be applied in handheld devices, extending to the whole mobile device industry. Therefore Samsung is speeding up integration and development of single chip solutions such as Flex-OneNAND and SSD in the expectation of making mobile devices smaller and lighter. Samsung aims to attract consumers by innovation of mobile devices technology and promote the growth of handheld devices and consumer electronics market. 

Improvement of Memory Production Technologies to Impact Traditional Hard Disk Drive Makers

The production process of non-volatile memory keeps moving forward from 60nm to 50nm, and one MLC NAND Flash chip can reach a storage capacity of 16GB storage; SLC NAND Flash chips can reach 8GB. Storage enlargement can help reduce the cost difference with traditional hard disk drives, especially for those with smaller storage. The advantages of NAND in size and speed will threaten hard disk drive makers.

SLC can only save a bit per cell and it is not advantageous in cost, for it has less storage compared with products of the same storage. With same storage, it is more expensive than NAND Flash with MLC structure; however, SLC is more suitable for quick data access among other things, so that it is often adopted in notebook PCs and UMPCs (Ultra Mobile PC). Compared with SLC, MLC has a cost advantage and can save much more data, so it is often applied in consumer electronics, overlapping with the application fields of traditional hard disk makers.

Samsung indicated that 40nm process technology can be used to make a 32GB MLC NAND Flash chip or a 16GB SLC NAND Flash chip in the future. A 4GB hard disk for consumer electronics only needs two MLC NAND Flash chips and a 64GB SSD hard disk only needs 32 SLC NAND Flash chips. To reach the same storage as before, the amount of chips has been reduced by half. With the rapid cost reduction, the application of non-volatile memory will spread wider, while hard disk makers cannot reduce cost on the same level. Therefore, in the future NAND Flash is expected to increasingly replace traditional hard disks in mobile applications and applications with relatively low storage needs.

SSD Product Design Becomes More Flexible

Applied in HHD, OneNAND Flash made with Fusion technology can improve read speed to 108MB/s, considerably faster than 64 MB/s of SSD. Samsung adopts Flex-OneNAND technology, which can adjust the proportion among MLC, SLC, and SRAM, and electronics products with different characteristics can be equipped with a version which is most suitable for them. Samsung thereby could strengthen its position in different memory market segments.

In computing systems such as notebook PCs, UMPC, or storage devices, SSD has currently been adopted by large brand-name vendors. Owing to the demand for quick data access and response by notebook PC and UMPC users, NAND Flash in SSD usually uses an SLC structure, which is more expensive. MLC, which has a lower price tag, has slower read and write speeds and a shorter lifespan. Therefore, when Flex-OneNAND technology gradually becomes mature, OneNAND will be adopted in SSD. This will help SSD improve areas such as read, write, lifespan, and cost, and product strategies will be able to become more flexible and diversified.