Samsung claims breakthrough in NAND flash memory

Giant Korean chaebol Samsung said it has started shipping a class of NAND memory that will speed up the read performance of mobile devices.

It has been shipping a 30 nanometer 32 gigabit multi level cell NAND memory with asynchronous DDR interface since the end of last month.

Samsung said double data rate transmission can be achieved without sucking up more power. The chips will read at 133 megabits per second, replacing single rate NAND. That only manages 40 megabits per second.

The NAND is aimed at the SSD (solid state drive) market for PCs, SD memory cards for smatphones, and at personal media players, MP3 players, and car navigation systems.

The worldwide market for NAND flash is estimated to be worth $13.8 billion this year, and Gartner Dataquest reckons it will reach $23.6 billion by 2012.