Embedded Nand Flash

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Product Design for the 21st Century

Simplify Embedded NAND Flash Design Scott Nelson Director of Marketing Memory Products

Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. “One of Toshiba's embedded NAND solutions, LBA- NAND™ simplifies design and eliminates the need for the host to handle NAND management functions. It significantly eases the hardware and software design effort and speeds time to market.”

• Eliminates the need for an external Flash controller, saving PCB real estate and controller acquisition cost • Minimizes software development • Geometry-independent addressing simplifies product upgrades and increases in memory capacity • Ships preformatted • Available in 2GB1, 4GB and 8GB capacities When used herein in relation to memory density, gigabyte and/or GB means 1,024x1,024x1,024 = 1,073,741,824 bytes. Usable capacity may be less. For details, please refer to specifications

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High density NAND with an optimized controller eases embedded design challenges

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LBA-NAND™ is a single-package solution that combines high-density NAND with a memory controller that handles all NAND management functions. It features a standard NAND physical interface supported by many existing microprocessors and custom ASIC controllers. LBA-NAND is a single-package MLC NAND Flash solution that uses logical block addressing, a common approach used in hard disk drives that gives each sector or block of storage a unique address and presents the system processor with a clean, easy to use interface. As a result, it’s easier than ever to use NAND flash in embedded designs. Hardware design is nearly as easy as interfacing with a hard disk drive. There’s no need for a separate NAND Flash controller to perform Flash management functions. As an added benefit, LBA-NAND devices are preformatted, eliminating the need to write flash device initialization software, and removing a manufacturing step. On the software side, developers no longer need to implement software algorithms for error correction, block management and wear-leveling. These functions are handled by the LBA-NAND controller, thereby eliminating the need for a NAND Flash file system or Flash translation layer. All that’s needed is a device driver to control the ™ What is LBA-NAND ? LBA-NAND. There’s no need to update host con™ LBA-NAND trollers and related drivers every time the NAND goes through a die shrink, or Host NAND MLC NAND storage capacity needs to be increased. interface Controller NAND processor As a result, LBA NAND can be used easily with an off-the shelf microprocessor or DSP. As electronic devices steadily • Single-package Flash Solution add memory capacity, Toshiba is helping — Logical Block Addressing (LBA) developers shorten product development — ECC, Block Management, Wear-leveling Functions schedules by simplifying the integration — Multi-Level Cell Technology (MLC) of embedded NAND.

AND Flash is fast becoming the preferred data storage solution for a wide range of electronic products because of its solid-state performance, high capacities, fast access time, low power requirements and excellent shock resistance. At the same time, the design complexity of integrating NAND in embedded applications has increased significantly as physical geometries have decreased, Multi-Level Cell (MLC) technology has been widely adopted, and flash manufacturers have added proprietary features. In today’s typical embedded flash designs, data integrity and NAND management tasks have often been administered by an external flash controller or the host CPU. One of the design challenges when using an external NAND controller is the lag-time between the availability of the next-generation NAND and the development of corresponding third-party controllers. Or if the designer relies on the built-in capabilities of the host processor, the ECC may not match what is recommended for the latest generation NAND. To eliminate these issues and simplify design of embedded flash storage subsystems, Toshiba has developed several embedded NAND solutions. Toshiba’s

— NAND Controller with Common Interface

LBA-NAND™ is Toshiba’s trademark for a NAND interface controller and NAND flash memory that applies the LBA logical address access method.

For more information about Toshiba Embedded Memory Solutions, go to

embeddednand.toshiba.com