Samsung and Toshiba to Share Specs on Flash Chips

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and Toshiba Corporation have licensed to one another the rights to produce, market and
sell memory with the specifications and trademarks of Samsung’s
OneNAND and Toshiba’s
LBA-NAND

memory chips.

As a result of the reciprocal arrangement, OEMs will have a broader choice of suppliers for each
premium memory chip, thereby reducing any potential risk of
over-dependence on a single supplier for any of the selected chips. The
arrangement is expected to result in increased availability of
premium-performance OneNAND and LBA-NAND flash devices worldwide.

Under terms of the agreement, Samsung will license product
specifications of its integrated OneNAND and Flex-OneNAND “fusion”
memory chips to Toshiba, while Toshiba will license product
specifications of its single-package LBA-NAND and mobileLBA-NAND flash
chips to Samsung. Both companies will develop and market products that
are compatible with the respective original-source technology. Samsung
and Toshiba each plan to release products next year based on the
respectively licensed product specifications.

Masaki Momodomi, Flash Memory Technology Executive of Toshiba Corporation’s
Semiconductor Company, said, “Signing this
agreement will provide a major boost for market development and we
believe it will trigger substantial new growth. It will allow our
customers more options – both in terms of high
performance technologies and suppliers. We believe that this agreement
will bring positive results to the industry as a whole.”

Yun-Ho Choi, senior vice president of the Flash Team at Samsung
Electronics’ Semiconductor Business, said, “The
advanced performance specs and easy design-in features of the NAND flash
memories to which the agreement applies can greatly improve design
options for CE application designers, while reducing development costs.
Samsung will place additional priority on meeting the anticipated growth
in demand for high-performance NAND flash in mobile and other consumer
applications through the provisioning of more diverse NAND solutions and
peripheral interfaces.”

Samsung’s OneNAND and Flex OneNAND are fusion
memories that integrate a NAND core, SRAM, error correcting engines, and
logic circuits in a single chip with a NOR interface. Flex-OneNAND’s
capability of partitioning SLC and MLC allows it to provide a highly
flexible and cost-effective flash storage solution for consumer
electronics and other applications. By providing optimized software
along with OneNAND, Samsung can help users easily design OneNAND into
their platforms for high performance while reducing total development
time.

Toshiba’s LBA-NAND and mobileLBA-NAND are non-volatile memories that
integrate a controller and NAND flash memory in a single package. Pin
assignment and the command sequence are compatible with conventional
NAND flash memories, but logical address access methods are utilized.
LBA-NAND are designed for use in mobile consumer products, such as
digital audio players and personal media players, and mobileLBA-NAND are
for mobile phones. Both support developers in minimizing development
costs and shortening development times for new and upgraded products.

Toshiba Corp.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.