Samsung Brings 40nm Technology to Production

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has begun using 40-nanometer (nm) process technology to produce an eight-gigabit (Gb) Flex-OneNAND fusion memory chip. Samsung’s Flex-OneNAND is a proprietary memory device that provides both SLC and MLC NAND in a single cost-efficient chip. It has been designed for applications that require high speed and high reliability in processing both code and data content.

Combination between types of memory such as DRAM and Flash and non-memory such as logic and software on a single chip

Applications using Flex-OneNAND are expected to expand from high-performance smart phones today, to full HDTVs, IPTVs and other high-end applications by year end.

"Forty nanometer Flex-OneNAND is a tremendous advancement for the memory industry, one which offers a uniquely cost-effective approach to memory selection, while permitting designers the flexibility of adjusting designs up to the final design stage," said Jim Elliott, memory vice president, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.

By adopting advanced 40nm class technology, Samsung achieves an increase in productivity of up to 180 percent increase in productivity over the first Flex-OneNAND, a 4Gb device designed on 60nm-class technology.

Developed in 2007, Flex-OneNAND incorporates SLC and MLC NAND on a single piece of silicon, allowing application designers to choose the portion of SLC and MLC NAND storage to be used in any particular design through a simple adjustment to the accompanying software. This maximizes the performance and efficiency of the embedded flash chip.

Samsung has included software to support a system level interface for embedded memory, moviNAND (or eMMC) in its 8Gb Flex-OneNAND. This new feature allows handset designers to easily introduce high-density embedded memory in their next generation phones, eliminating the need to source additional software. As embedded memory can increase high data transfer speeds, more high-end phones are expected to be introduced with from 1GB to even 32GB of embedded memory.

Flex-OneNAND’s MLC area provides up to a three times greater read speed and its SLC area offers up to a four times greater read speed than regular MLC NAND. The Flex-OneNAND MLC area features a comparable write speed to regular MLC NAND and its SLC area provides a write speed up to three times higher.

Flex-OneNAND reduces the area needed for the memory on the printed circuit board and improves performance by diminishing transmission noise.

Samsung also said it is expanding its collaboration with chipset designers to provide OEMs with added convenience in implementing innovative memory solutions such as Flex-OneNAND.