OT Flash gets speed hike
By Chris Edwards
Electronics Times
(05/08/01 10:06 a.m. GMT)
Atmel has developed a flash memory that works on the
same bus as SDRAM, anticipating a move towards higher
bandwidth memories in embedded systems such as
smartphones.
The company has shipped a version of its Sflash to a
laser printer manufacturer and has lined up 50, 75 and
100MHz versions.
For the cellphone market, Atmel, Intel and Micron
Technology have produced synchronous devices that can
burst data at up to 50MHz. The Atmel design can double
that speed for bursts of four or eight words. But Richard
De Caro, its director of strategic marketing, says the
'sweet spot' for the 32Mbit memory will be at 75MHz.
"Mobile phones will incorporate more SDRAM as well as
adding pseudo-static ram because of the cost per bit equation," said De Caro.
He says there will be pressure to adopt SDRAM interfaces on flash from cost as well as
performance reasons because SDRAM will turn up in advanced phones, particularly for
the Japanese market.
"They want the flash to reside on the same bus," said De Caro, adding that
high-speed flash reduces the need to 'shadow' code to SRAM or DRAM which
historically has been faster.
But he says that power consumption will have to come down, with a shrink from the
current 0.25µm process design to 0.18µm, before SDRAM flash will move into mobile
applications.
Clifford Smith, European marketing manager for Intel's wireless, comms and
computing group, said: "We constantly evaluate the interface types and Intel is
heavily focused on the cellphone market. Customers [in that market] tell us that
synchronous burst is good in terms of improving bandwidth, but they have not asked
us for an SDRAM interface.
"The automotive customers will ask for one and the set-top box designers may ask.
We continue to look at it but we have no current product plans."
Atmel has not changed the memory cell to get burst cycles down to 10ns but has
worked on the data access design.
"To get the speed, it takes a ton of sense amps. To get to a burst length of eight
doublewords, you've got to have 256 sense amps," said De Caro.
