ONFI Announces Publication Of 3.0 Standard, Pushes Data Transfer Speeds To 400 MB/sec

SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 15, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) Working Group, the organization dedicated to simplifying integration of NAND Flash memory into consumer electronic devices, computing platforms, and industrial systems, today published the new ONFI 3.0 standard. By using the non-volatile DDR2 (NV-DDR2) interface, the newly ratified standard reaches speeds of up to 400 megabytes (MB)/sec, doubling the current NAND interface transfer rates.

The ONFI 3.0 standard details the interface and infrastructure that ONFI's more than 100 members can employ to develop products that deliver the industry's fastest NAND interface. Improvements in ONFI 3.0's NAND interface speeds will also enable future NAND controllers to achieve similar performance with half the number of channels, providing both a cost and space savings, which are key requirements for solid-state drive (SSD) design. The ONFI 3.0 incorporates a sophisticated die selection feature that reduces the number of chip enable (CE) pins, which in turn lowers the number of controller pins making PCB routing more efficient. Reducing the number of CE pins is especially important for SSDs, providing a significant cost reduction and allowing the extra pins to be assigned to other applications within the system.

"The enabling of fast ONFI 3.0 NAND is something a controller company can greatly benefit from," says K.S. Pua, Chairman and CEO of Phison Electronics. "Our customers are eager to achieve higher speeds in their USB 3.0 and SATA SSD products. The adoption of ONFI 3.0 would mean keeping up with the increasing bandwidth offered by these host interfaces, bringing the overall performance of NAND applications to an outstanding level."