Winbond intros industry’s smallest serial flash memories for space-critical apps

SAN JOSE, USA & TAICHUNG, TAIWAN: Winbond Electronics Corp., a leading global supplier of specialty memory solutions for computer, consumer and communication applications, announced a family of new SpiFlash Serial Flash memories with the industry’s smallest packages per density.

The small form factors make them ideal for space-critical designs, such as smart phones, Bluetooth headsets, cameras, digital video, gaming, GPS, wireless modules and other mobile/handheld products. With minimal package dimensions as small as 3.4mm2, these new devices meet the space-saving needs of the rapidly growing mobile-computing market with a range of densities from 512K-bit to 16M-bit.

Available in eight-pin ultra-thin small-outline no-lead (USON) and wafer-level-ball-grid-array (WLBGA) forms, the new SpiFlash memories occupy less than 20 percent of the space used by ordinary 30mm2 WSON and SOIC packages.

Broad range of densities and low power
The new USON 6mm2 (2 x 3 x 0.55mm) SpiFlash memories come in densities of 512Kb, 1Mb, 2Mb, 4Mb and 8Mb in 2.5V or 3V versions; power-saving 1.8V versions are also available for 2Mb and 4Mb densities. The 8Mb USON is the industry’s highest density available in such a package.

The WLBGA devices, which use a Wafer-Level-Chip-Scale-Packages (WLCSP) assembly process, are available in 8Mb (3.4mm2) and 16Mb (4.8mm2) densities that operate at 1.8V. The WLBGAs are 0.47mm in height and use 11 percent and 16 percent the space, respectively, of a WSON or SOIC package, making them the smallest and thinnest packages on the market today. The WLBGA packages also provide design security by preventing access to the chips’ signals once mounted to PCBs.

Over a billion serial flash memories shipped
Winbond, a pioneer and leader in Serial Flash memories, invented and first introduced the popular multi-I/O Serial Flash architecture, now widely used throughout the industry. Since then Winbond’s SpiFlash memory growth has been significant, from 20 million units in 2006 to more than one billion in the first three quarters of 2011 shipped to global customers in virtually all electronic product segments.

Winbond’s 90-nanometer Flash technology, manufactured at the company’s 12-inch wafer fabrication facility in Taichung Taiwan, has been key in not only driving Flash memory growth to 40 percent of Winbond’s revenue, but also instrumental in achieving small die sizes for extremely space-efficient packaging. Winbond’s new 58nm technology will continue this trend as it rolls out over the next several quarters.

“Our new USON and WLBGA devices round out Winbond’s broad portfolio of SpiFlash memories in standard packages such as SOIC, WSON and FBGA,” said Robin Jigour, VP of Flash Memory marketing at Winbond. “Small-form-factors, low-pin-count and low-power, over a broad range of Serial Flash densities, make these new devices well-suited for mobile and handheld applications that are increasingly challenged for available board space.”

“As new mobile and handheld products are designed smaller yet more technologically advanced, they require higher-capacity memories but in reduced sizes,” said Michael Yang, principal analyst for memory and storage at iSuppli. “Serial Flash memory provides a viable solution, as it delivers a variety of capacities with minimal real estate requirement.”

Winbond’s W25X (Single & Dual SPI) and W25Q (Single, Dual and Quad SPI), USON devices are sampling now, with some versions in full production, and priced from $0.32 to $0.57 in 10,000 unit quantities. The W25Q80BWBYIG (8Mb) and W25Q16DWBYIG (16Mb) WLBGA devices are in production now and priced from $0.68 to $0.97 in 10,000 unit quantities.