In a bold move aimed at giving OEMs more choice for premium memory chips from Samsung and Toshiba, as well as to reduce the risk of over-dependence on a single supplier, the companies have announced a cross-licensing agreement. They have cross-licensed one another's specifications and trademarks for NAND technology - specifically Samsung's OneNAND and Toshiba's LBA-NAND.

As a result of their arrangement, the companies believe OEMs will have a broader choice of suppliers for each premium memory chip, and the potential risk of over-dependence on a single supplier for any of the selected chips will be reduced. The companies also expect this deal to result in increased availability of premium-performance OneNAND and LBA-NAND flash devices worldwide.

Under their agreement, Samsung will license product specifications of its integrated OneNAND and Flex-OneNAND 'fusion' memory chips to Toshiba, while Toshiba will license product specifications of its single-package LBA-NAND and mobileLBA-NAND flash chips to Samsung.

Both companies said they will develop and market products that are compatible with the respective original-source technology and both plan to release products next year based on the respectively licensed product specs.

Yun-Ho Choi, senior VP of the flash team at Samsung Electronics' Semiconductor Business said Samsung will place additional priority on meeting the anticipated growth in demand for high-performance NAND flash in mobile and other consumer applications through the provisioning of more diverse NAND solutions and peripheral interfaces.

Samsung said its OneNAND and Flex OneNAND are fusion memories that integrate a NAND core, SRAM, error correcting engines, and logic circuits in a single chip with a NOR interface. Flex-OneNAND's capability of partitioning SLC and MLC allows it to provide a highly flexible and cost-effective flash storage solution for consumer electronics and other applications.

By providing optimized software along with OneNAND, Samsung says it can help users easily design OneNAND into their platforms for high performance while reducing total development time.

Toshiba explained that its LBA-NAND and mobileLBA-NAND are non-volatile memories that integrate a controller and NAND flash memory in a single package. Pin assignment and the command sequence are compatible with conventional NAND flash memories, but logical address access methods are utilized. LBA-NAND are designed for use in mobile consumer products, such as digital audio players and personal media players, and mobileLBA-NAND are for mobile phones.

By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor - Electronic News

See also: Electronics Weekly's Focus on Samsung Electronics, a roundup of content on three main areas of the technology giant's development: memory chips, LCD displays and mobile phone technology.