Although this event was prepared by Samsung Electronics alone, about 100 CEOs of world-famous companies including ARM, Inventec, and Quanta participate in this event. While explaining its high-tech semiconductor products lineup, Hwang Chang-gyu, CEO of Samsung Electronics, has proudly demonstrated its worldwide status as the world's largest total solution provider.
In the meeting Samsung Electronics demonstrated five kinds of next generation mobile products including Flex-OneNand.
Flex-OneNand maintains the high function of existing OneNand flash memory, but it succeeds in integrating two kinds of NAND flash - SLC and MLC - into one chip. Just like a hybrid car, it is a fusion semiconductor integrating both SLC and MLC. SLC is speedy and accurate, and MLC is cheap and of high capacity. Following its first development of OneNand, and second development of OneDRAM, this Flex-OneNAND is the third development of fusion semiconductors.
Due to the different characteristics of mobile phones, mobile providers are in need of different handling speeds and diverse memory capacity. Especially, this new Flex-OneNAND makes it possible to coordinate data handling speeds and memory capacity.
Critical role in mobile convergence era
CEO Hwang said: "As Flex-OneNAND has given our customers, the right to make use of our products, our customers are able to get much profit out of their system development.
It will bring convenience, slimming, miniaturization, and low cost to our customers. Until now, customers have not been in a position to control the function of finished products, but Flex-OneNAND has made it possible. Because of this, this fusion semiconductor will take the lead in this era of mobile convergence and as a customerfriendly solution." As Samsung has succeeded in developing Flex-OneNAND following OneDRAM last November, thus strengthening its semiconductors lineup, the company is expected to increase its sales amount to US$10 billion by fusion semiconductors alone for the next five years until 2011.
Flex-OneNAND, as a true fusion memory solution, has integrated the memory, logic, and software into one chip, thus making digital device smaller, lighter, slimmer, and highly functional. In this respect, Flex-OneNand is a true third generation fusion semiconductor. The first generation fusion semiconductor is in the form of stacking chips like the Multi-Chip Package (MCP) or System in Package (SiP).
The second-generation fusion semiconductor crams memory, logic, sensor, CPU, and software into one package. That is to say, all these functions can be realized in a package. The typical second-generation fusion semiconductor is OneNAND. This product has combined both NAND flash, which is quick to write and NOR flash, which is quick to read.
However, this product is not a single chip but a single package. In this sense, it is not a real fusion semiconductor. The third-generation fusion semiconductor is in the form of one single chip, in which two kinds of semiconductor is integrated on one circuit.
In case of Flex-OneNAND, the functions of three chips - MLC NAND flash, SLC NAND flash, and controller - have been integrated on a circuit. By using these chips for mobile phones, the existing multimedia quad chipset of MLC, SLC, controller, and DRAM chips have been condensed into two chips, Flex-OneNAND and DRAM.
