Genusion, the Osaka-based flash memory start-up, has got the mobile phone manufacturers interested in its ultra-reliable, ultra-long endurance, low-cost, NOR flash memories, and is working with an unnamed fab to put them into production.

"We'll be sampling in September next year", Moriyoshi Nakashima, CEO of Genusion, told Electronics Weekly. First product will be a 1Gbit NOR MLC flash made on a 90nm process.

"It is half the cost of conventional NOR", said Nakashima and so, at 90nm, can compete on cost with products made on 65nm processes.

Nakashima has just spent three weeks in Europe, showing off the new enhanced capabilities of his NOR cell at the Non-volatile Semiconductor Memory Workshop/International Conference on Memory Technology in Paris and visiting the major mobile phone makers.

"The mobile phone manufacturers in Europe and Japan are worried about quality", said Nakashima, whose new cell can be recycled a million times, with 20 year continuous read operation and ten year memory retention at 150degC.

As well as the mobile phone companies, Nakashima has a customer lined up in the amusement games machine business.

He has also held talks with two of the three main NOR producers, but is not disclosing details of any possible co-operation.

Genusion has also got an embedded flash technology which uses the trapped-charge technological approach instead of the traditional floating gate approach.

Genusion's embedded flash product comes as an IP block that can be embedded in a standard CMOS logic process. The block is capable of 100,000 memory re-cycles and 20-year data retention at 150degC.

"I want to create a second billion dollar business with Genusion," said Nakashima.

The first billion dollar business he created was with Mitsubishi, when he took the company's flash business from a $100m revenue business losing $100m a year, to a profitable $1bn revenue business.

So far Nakashima has raised $7m and needs to raise another $10m to get to the product-producing, revenue-earning stage of company evolution.

In the past, Nakashima turned down VC offers, but has now relented and accepted VC financing from one company and is in talks with another.

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