This new device extends beyond its 65nm predecessor as the advanced NOR flash in the market. The company’s NOR flash memory chips are commonly used in mobile phones to run the vital phone operations, manage personal data and store photos, music and videos.
The 45nm 1gigabit (Gb) monolithic device is based on the company’s StrataFlash memory architecture and is compatible with the company’s high-volume 65nm NOR flash chips. The architectural compatibility and continuity allows cellular original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to decrease development costs, widen the life of current platforms, and bring new products that take advantage of significant storage and faster execute-in-place memory capacity to market faster.
“The mobile phone memory segment remains large and the need for high-density, low-cost non-volatile NOR flash memory continues to drive aggressive scaling requirements,” said Ed Doller, chief technology officer at Numonyx. “Numonyx engineers overcame major scaling limitations by developing new process techniques to produce the 7th generation MLC NOR flash on the industry’s most advanced 45nm technology, and to be the first to bring the cost and performance benefits to our customers.”
The company’s technologists attained a major breakthrough in how they designed this new NOR flash memory technology. By means of a new self-aligned contact (SAC) approach, the method enables the company’s NOR flash memory products to continue to scale while maintaining backward compatibility and the highest levels of quality and reliability. “At a time when the entire industry grapples with the scalability of all flash memory technologies, it’s quite an accomplishment to be able to deliver architectural and product continuity that meets or exceeds customers’ cost and reliability requirements,” added Doller.
The company is sampling now in limited quantities and the densities, and plans to introduce products on the new technology in 2009. The high volume production is anticipated in 2010. The company also plans to install this technology across the wide range of its embedded flash memory solutions, extending the performance benefits and also the stability and reliability of architectural continuity to the key embedded market segments.
