ACADEMIA

SanDisk Corporation announced it is using the world's most advanced semiconductor manufacturing process to produce SanDisk's highest performing embedded memory products.

iNAND Extreme is now being built on SanDisk's 19 nanometer (nm) process technology to enable the large-capacity, high-performance embedded NAND flash memory products that are ideally suited for high-end tablets and smartphones. Products running the Android operating system as well as the upcoming Microsoft Windows RT version of the Windows 8 operating system can benefit from iNAND Extreme capacity, performance and small size.

iNAND Extreme embedded flash memory can significantly improve performance for multitasking, web browsing, file transfer and image capture performance to produce a more enjoyable experience for smartphone and tablet users. iNAND Extreme comes in capacities ranging from 16GB to 128GB. 128GB of memory is enough to store several HD movies and thousands of songs and photos.

At 19nm, the manufacturing technology used to build circuitry in the iNAND Extreme is incredibly small. For comparative purposes, the width of a sheet of paper is about 0.1mm or about 100,000nm, meaning that more than 5000 objects 19nm in size could fit across the edge of a sheet of paper.

iNAND Extreme will be used on reference designs for the NVIDIA Tegra 3 4-Plus-1 quad-core processor as a recommended high performance storage device for high-end tablet and mobile devices using the latest operating systems.

"SanDisk is a key partner for us in showcasing Tegra 3's capabilities," said Rene Haas, general manager, Notebook Products, NVIDIA. "Just as Tegra delivers great performance and battery life in a wide range of mobile devices, iNAND Extreme provides a high performance memory solution to help create a world-class user experience for tablets and mobile devices."

"SanDisk's technology and manufacturing expertise allow us to provide our OEM customers with the high-capacity storage that generates tangible benefits for consumers," said Dan Inbar, senior vice president and general manager, OEM Business. "We also work with leading software makers to optimize our memory for next generation operating systems, file systems and typical usage patterns. This adds to our ability to help mobile equipment makers build products that provide an outstanding user experience."

SanDisk's 128GB iNAND Extreme product comes in a highly competitive 12mm by 16mm package. The product conforms to the new e.MMC 4.5 specification and can achieve up to 45 megabyte per second (MB/sec) sequential write and 100 MB/sec read speeds. The new generation of iNAND Extreme also more than doubles the random write performance of previous generations and significantly improves random read performance. It has also been designed for optimal integration with file systems used by current and future generations of tablet and smartphone devices. Samples of the latest version of iNAND Extreme will be available to customers this month with general availability this summer.

The SanDisk iNAND product family includes an embedded storage solution for every performance segment and capacity point in the mobile market. SanDisk iNAND family includes iNAND, iNAND Ultra and iNAND Extreme products.