IM Flash Technologies has become the first to sample an 8 gigabit (Gb) single-level cell (SLC), unveiling high-speed NAND flash memory technology offering data transfer speeds that are five times faster than conventional NAND technology.

IM Flash Technologies, a joint venture of Intel Corp. and Micron Technology Inc., claims that the High speed NAND enables data to be transferred in a fraction of the time compared to conventional NAND.

According to Micron, SLC high speed NAND can read data at speeds up to 200 megabytes per second (MB/s) and can write data at speeds up to 100 MB/s, achieved by leveraging the new ONFI 2.0 specification and a four plane architecture with higher clock speeds. In comparison, conventional SLC NAND is limited to 40 MB/s for reading data and less than 20 MB/s for writing data.

Bill Lauer said, "As more and more of today's popular consumer electronic and computing devices continue to move to silicon for storage, it is essential that we improve how data is accessed and transferred in NAND. With the new capabilities designed into high speed NAND, the performance benefits will be visible to the consumer, allowing them to experience a faster way of transferring digital content between devices such as computers, digital cameras, MP3 players and cell phones."

Bill Lauer, senior director of marketing for Boise, Idaho-based Micron's memory group, told that the 8GB single-level cell memory technology, simply dubbed as high-speed NAND, is presently being tried out by OEMs and controller manufacturers. The manufacturer is planning to begin mass production of high-speed NAND technology by this summer.

Designed on the 50-nanometer process node, Micron's 8 Gb SLC high speed NAND component is sampling now to major OEMs and controller manufacturers with mass production expected to commence in the second half of 2008. The company also expects to unveil future ONFI 2.0-derived NAND products in the next year.

According to Lauer, the technology should enable accelerated download rates and quicker information access across enterprise hardware systems, applications, video and mobile devices. Micron plans to incorporate the fast-moving memory into its RealSSD family of solid-state drive products that was unveiled in November. The high-speed NAND technology could boost speeds for nascent hybrid hard drives, which combine spinning disk and flash memory, by up to four times faster than traditional spinning hard drives.

Micron plans to utilize its high-speed NAND to augment speeds of interface standards such as PCI Express and USB 3.0, which is still in development. The company also said it will construct a multilevel cell version of its technology in the next year. However, Intel officials could not be immediately reached for comment regarding its product and development plans for high-speed NAND.

Joe Unsworth, an analyst at Gartner Inc., said Intel and Micron's high-speed NAND will help boosting adoption of flash memory technology among users looking for stronger performance. According to him, because of cost issues, the new high-speed technology probably won't "catch fire" and quickly be used in USB drives and flash memory cards. Unsworth contended that prices for flash-based solid-state storage must drop before it can present a strong challenge to hard disks.

Micron Technology, Inc., is one of the major providers of advanced semiconductor solutions. It is widely known for worldwide operations, markets DRAMs, NAND flash memory, CMOS image sensors, other semiconductor components, and memory modules for use in leading-edge computing, consumer, networking, and mobile products. Its stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the MU symbol. Micron and the Micron orbit logo are trademarks of Micron Technology, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. More information on high speed NAND is available on Micron's website at www.micron.com/highspeed.