Friday, March 16, 2007

Samsung 8GB memory monster unveiled

SAMSUNG Electronics has started shipping sample quantities of its 8 gigabyte memory chip to mobile phone makers, and said it will start mass production of the chip next quarter.

The company said the so-called “MoviNAND” chip was twice as fast and could store twice as much data than the existing 4GB version of the chip. It is the highest density embedded flash memory developed to date.

“It can store up to 2,000 songs or enough map data to implement global positioning system (GPS) and points of interest for the entire western world,” Samsung said in a statement. “In addition, it can also be used with removable media cards to permit virtually unlimited memory expansion.”

The company expects the MoviNAND to reach an accumulated sales volume of US$4 billion by 2010.

Because Samsung's moviNAND allows NAND flash to be instantly accessed through a standardized MMC interface, manufacturers who use the new memory solution can develop mobile phones more quickly and at less cost than with raw MLC NAND components soldered into a handset.

Samsung's moviNAND memory observes the eMMC standard jointly developed by JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) and MMCA (MultiMediaCard Association) for embedded flash memory applications.

Samsung also announced that it had started mass production of the industry’s first DDR2 DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) using 60 nanometre process technology.

Samsung expects manufacturers will be receptive to the 60nm process, which should drive greater demand for 1GB DRAM chips in the near future over today’s mainstream 512MB memory chips.


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