Samsung Electronics said on Tuesday that it began shipping its 32Gb multi-level-cell (MLC) NAND flash chips with an asynchronous DDR (double data rate) interface made using 30nm-class process technology to major OEMs at the end of November.

“With the new DDR MLC NAND, double data rate transmission can be achieved without increasing power consumption, giving designers a lot more latitude in introducing diverse CE devices,” said Soo-In Cho, executive vice president and general manager of the Memory Division at Samsung Electronics.

DDR NAND will sharply raise the read performance of mobile devices requiring high-speeds and large amounts of storage space. Samsung’s new DDR MLC NAND chip, which reads at 133Mb/s (16.6MB/s) would replace single data rate (SDR) MLC NAND, which has an overall read performance of 40Mb/s (5MB/s).  

Samsung’s new asynchronous DDR MLC NAND can be used in SSDs for PCs, premium SD memory cards for smartphones, and in Samsung’s proprietary moviNANDTM memory. In addition, the high-density, high-performance memory is an ideal solution for personal media players (PMPs), MP3 players and car navigation systems (CNS).

Use of 30nm-class DDR NAND enables premium memory cards to register 60Mb/s (7.5MB/s) read speeds, at least a 300% performance gain compared to SDR NAND-based memory cards with an average 17Mb/s (2.1MB/s) read speed, according to Samsung.

Production of the Samsung 30nm-class DDR MLC NAND comes just eight months after the company announced availability of its 30nm-class 32Gb MLC NAND.

According to market research firm Gartner Dataquest, the global NAND flash memory market is forecast to be worth US$13.8 billion in 2009 and reach $23.6 billion by 2012.

Tags: Samsung, Flash, 30nm