Samsung announces industry’s first mass production of 30nm-class asynchronous DDR NAND Flash

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd has announced the industry’s first mass production of its 30-nanometer (nm) class, 32 gigabit (Gb), multi-level-cell (MLC) NAND memory with an asynchronous DDR (double data rate) interface. The company said it began shipping initial production of its DDR NAND to major OEMs at the end of November.

DDR NAND will sharply raise the read performance of mobile devices requiring high-speeds and large amounts of storage space. Samsung’s new DDR MLC NAND chip, which reads at 133 megabits per second (Mbps) would replace single data rate (SDR) MLC NAND, which has an overall read performance of 40Mbps.

“With the new DDR MLC NAND, double data rate transmission can be achieved without increasing power consumption, giving designers a lot more latitude in introducing diverse CE devices,” said Soo-In Cho, executive vice president and general manager of the Memory Division at Samsung Electronics.

He added: “Samsung’s accelerated push toward providing memory solutions at much higher speeds will enable faster introduction of high-performance mobile devices that deliver added convenience and greater value to consumers.”

Samsung’s new asynchronous DDR MLC NAND can be used in SSDs for PCs, premium SD memory cards for smartphones, and in Samsung’s proprietary moviNANDTM memory. In addition, the high-density, high-performance memory is an ideal solution for personal media players (PMPs), MP3 players and car navigation systems (CNS).

Production of the Samsung 30nm-class DDR MLC NAND comes just eight months after the company announced availability of its 30nm-class 32Gb MLC NAND.

Use of 30nm-class DDR NAND enables premium memory cards to register 60Mbps read speeds, at least a 300 percent performance gain compared to SDR NAND-based memory cards with an average 17Mbps read speed.

Mass production of asynchronous DDR MLC NAND, like the introduction of 30nm-class 3-bit MLC NAND is expected to substantially raise the portion of NAND flash production devoted to high density consumer electronics (32GB and above) to accommodate increased video sharing.

According to market research firm Gartner Dataquest, the global NAND flash memory market is forecast to be worth US$13.8 billion in 2009 and reach US$23.6 billion by 2012.