Intel, the second largest NOR flash supplier, is trying to
re-engineer its technology to make it suitable for data storage so
it can compete in the fastest growing part of the flash market
currently addressed by NAND flash.
"We are going to compete in data, and there is no reason it
can't be served by NOR," Peter Van Deventer, director of flash
products group at Intel, told Electronics Weekly, adding,
"we believe we can do some very creative things in NOR so we can
compete."
The creativity will lie in adapting its NOR cell to make it
comparable in size and write speed to NAND.
"If a NAND cell measures 4f2 (where f is the feature
size) then a NOR cell measures 10f2," according to
Helmut Schock, European memory boss at NAND pioneer and market
leader Toshiba. "NAND flash is three times cheaper to make than
floating gate NOR technology," he said.
The other problem Intel will have to solve is the much slower
write time of NOR compared to NAND. "We believe we can increase the
write speed by 10 times in the next twelve months and by 30 times
in the next twelve to eighteen months," said Van Deventer.
Intel had considered, but rejected, using Saifun's NROM flash
technology, said Van Deventer. Intel's main rival, Spansion, the
top supplier of NOR flash, is using the Saifun technology for flash
storage.
Saifun said NOR die size is three times larger than NROM on the
same process geometry, and Dr Bertrand Cambou, CEO of Spansion,
said: "Mirrorbit [AMD's name for NROM] is between 1.5 times to
three times cheaper than floating gate NOR technology."
Probably because of these engineering challenges, Intel is not
giving any date for entering the flash data storage market.