ClearNAND adds controller to NAND flash

Micron Technology will soon put error-correction code (ECC) in the same package with some of its NAND flash, potentially buffering its customers from the complexity of managing NAND and enabling NAND flash memory to continue to scale.

As NAND process technology has advanced, engineers began to notice an alarming trend. With the ever-shrinking geometries and nanoscale critical dimensions that allow for density growth and price reductions had come more and more errors and less rewrite endurance. To compensate, consumers of NAND would need to better manage NAND errors, invest more engineering time when adding NAND flash into products, and even potentially limit their use of NAND given the newfound challenges.

While it would be sometime before these concerns would have had a real effect on NAND use, it was still something to worry about, so last week Micron announced that it would add an in-package controller to some of its NAND products. This controller would handle all of the ECC, allowing Micron's customers to focus their engineering efforts on their own products.

Essentially, Micron has developed the necessary intellectual property to handle the ECC needed for the next set of NAND process shrinks and is willing to share that ECC with its customers at a relatively small premium.

This new solution, which Micron calls ClearNAND, seems to offer benefits for both OEMs and Micron. For example, it should be less expensive to pay Micron's premium for ClearNAND than it would be to develop or purchase the ECC IP separately. In addition, ClearNAND allows Micron to continue to shrink its NAND products without having to help each and every customer deal with the ECC needed to manage smaller, more dense, and more complex devices.

Finally, ClearNAND may enable NAND Flash memory to be used in new or different applications, since it has the potential to help NAND continue to scale and thereby help OEMs to continue to enjoy the benefits and die shrinks and their associated price-per-bit reductions.

Micron has offered a number of materials to help introduce engineers to ClearNAND, including a video introduction to the technology that can be found at

http://extmedia.micron.com/webmedia/clearnand_intro/clearnand.html.

Armando Roggio