Product category:
Memory Devices and Modules
News Release from: Hitachi Europe | Subject: AG-AND Flash memory
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 06 December 2001
New Flash cell makes memories smaller
and faster
Hitachi has developed a new AG-AND (assist gate-AND) type Flash memory cell, its first gigabyte-generation Flash memory.
Hitachi has developed a new AG-AND (assist gate-AND) type Flash memory cell, its first gigabyte-generation Flash memory Using a 0.13-micron process, the cell offers a fast write speed of 10Mbyte/s for a multilevel memory, compared with current write speeds of 2Mbyte/s
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 16 Feb 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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It also offers a small cell size of 0.052um2, which represents a size reduction of more than 50% compared with a conventional 0.18-micron process product.
It is suitable for use in a small Flash card, as used in portable music players, digital video cameras and mobile phones, for recording large-volumes of digital data, such as broadband content.
The new AG-AND Flash memory has been developed to meet the demands for small size and fast write speeds in a multilevel configuration.
The cell enables high-speed writing through the use of Hitachi's field isolation type cell structure, which employs an assist gate, instead of a conventional SGI (shallow groove isolation) type.
This cell structure, which alternately combines assist gates (for preventing inter-cell interference) and floating gates, has made it possible to achieve a cell size of 0.052um2 (on a bit basis) with a 0.13-micron process.
The AG-AND type cell uses a hot electron injection programming method instead of conventional F-N tunnelling to achieve fast-writing of the multilevel Flash memory.
Injecting hot electrons from the source side improves the floating gate injection efficiency, making high-speed parallel writing possible.
For commercially developed 0.13-micron process products, a write speed of 10Mbyte/s can be achieved by using a four-bank configuration within the chip.
This enables a single standard music CD (approximately 64Mbyte) to be downloaded to a Flash card in about 6s, and is the current target for small Flash cards such as MultiMediaCard products.
(This was Electronicstalk's Top Story on 5 December 2001).
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