Elpida Memory and Spansion have  announced they have created the industry's first charge-trapping 1.8V, 4Gb single level cell NAND flash memory. The advanced technical expertise and strong cooperation of the two companies has made it possible to develop and manufacture the world's first charge-trapping NAND Flash memory.

Compared to floating-gate NAND flash memory, charge-trapping NAND Flash memory is more scalable and has a simpler cell structure. It offers superior performance, faster read and faster programming speeds.

Elpida plans to start shipping samples of the 1.8V 4Gb NAND flash memory during the fourth quarter of 2010, will begin mass production during the first quarter of 2011, and is developing 2Gb and 1Gb density products in addition to its 4Gb products. Spansion will ship samples in the first quarter of 2011 and will begin production in the second quarter of 2011. Both companies are also developing 3.0V products and plan to develop 1Gb, 2Gb, and 4Gb products. To satisfy customer demands, we are developing a full lineup of our NAND flash memory.

Elpida plans to combine NAND flash memory with Mobile RAM to sell mobile consumer products, thereby providing memory solutions to the mobile market that offer high added value. In addition, Spansion is developing NAND solutions for the embedded and select wireless markets and continues to produce and sell its NOR flash memory products to its customers in the automotive, consumer, communications, industrial and select wireless market segments.

"This is an important milestone in our recently announced alliance with Elpida. The teams have made significant progress in this development and we believe it will benefit both Elpida's and Spansion's customers with new NAND products targeted at the specific market segments we each serve," said John Kispert, president and chief executive officer of Spansion.

Tags: Elpida, Spansion, NAND, Flash