Micron Introduces 2 New High-Performance Flash Chips

Micron Technology, which was forced to close down its NAND flash memory production facility in Boise, Idaho, in 2008 in a cost-cutting measure, is keeping its two remaining fabrication facilities—co-owned with Intel—busy in Lehi, Utah, and Manassas, Va.

The company announced Oct. 19 that it is now manufacturing two new NAND flash devices. The first is an MLC (multilevel cell) enterprise NAND chip that the company claimed can effectively double the capacity of a system's flash-based storage apparatus, "since MLC provides twice the capacity in the same die size as SLC" (single-level cell) flash memory.

The new MLC Enterprise NAND processor is capable of achieving 30,000 write cycles—a sixfold increase in endurance compared with standard MLC NAND, spokesperson Kirstin Bordner said.

At the same time, for enterprise applications that are more performance-driven, Micron introduced a 34-nanometer SLC enterprise NAND device that achieves a whopping 300,000 write cycles—a threefold increase over standard SLC NAND and the highest thus far in the industry, the company said.

Micron is now sampling both new enterprise NAND devices with systems makers and controller manufacturers for certification reasons, and is expected to be in volume production in early 2010, Bordner told eWEEK.

The new devices support the new ONFI 2.1 synchronous interface and improve data transfer rates by four to five times that of legacy NAND interfaces, Micron said.