ONFI 4.0 Standard Boosting Applications Enabled by NAND Storage Components

The Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) Working Group, the organization dedicated to simplifying integration of NAND flash memory into consumer electronic devices, computing platforms, and industrial systems, has published the new ONFI 4.0 standard.

TIt introduces the next generation of high-speed switching to the ONFI standard, NV-DDR3. The NV-DDR3 interface increases the maximum switching speed from 533MB/s to 800MB/s, providing a boost of up to 50% for high performance applications enabled by solid-state NAND storage components.

ONFI 4.0 not only increases the I/O switching speeds but does so with less I/O power by reducing the I/O switching voltage from 1.8V for NV-DDR2 to 1.2V nominal for NV-DDR3 (evolutionary center-terminated technology). The NV-DDR3 standard also lowers I/O capacitance further reducing the frequency component of I/O power. A comparison of I/O power consumption at 400MT/s between NV-DDR2 and NV-DDR3 shows that DDR3 draws an estimated one-tenth the power. This power reduction will benefit systems with large flash arrays.

Striving to maintain interoperability across all NAND vendors, ONFI 4.0 was aligned with material discussed and published (JESD230A) under the JEDEC/ONFI Joint Task Group. ONFI 4.0 continues to provide a superset of features beyond the features that ensre interoperability.

ONFI 4.0 brings higher speed I/O and power reductions to the development community while also maintaining backward compatibility with prior ONFI signaling standards.

“As NAND flash density increases and reduces the total die count in SSDs, the ONFI 4.0 specification enables our LSI SandForce flash controllers to further increase performance as we expand from SATA to PCIe solutions,” said Jeremy Werner, senior director of marketing, flash components division, LSI Corp. “The ONFI 4.0 ability to support a lower I/O voltage and capacitance will greatly help lower the overall power consumption of SSD solutions, which is critical for mobile computing environments.”

“The ONFI 4.0 interface was designed to reduce latencies and improve sequential NAND performance while at the same time reducing power consumption. These features should provide impetus for quick adoption,” said Terry Grunzke, principal engineer, Micron Technology, Inc., and ONFI technical chair.

“NAND interoperability is critical to creating cost-effective flash storage solutions,” said Gary Gentry, Seagate Technology LLC‘s SVP and director of SSDs. “The ONFI 4.0 feature set is perfect for anyone who wants to create high-speed flash storage designs.”

The ONFI Working Group was formed in May 2006 and currently has more than 100 member companies. Founding companies include Intel Corporation, Micron Technology, Inc., Phison Electronics Corporation, SanDisk Corp., SK Hynix, Inc., Sony Corporation, and Spansion LLC.