By: Stephan Rosner, Spansion

This week you are probably going to hear a lot about SSDs at Flash Memory Summit. They are an impressive technological advancement; my 128GB SSD has literally rejuvenated my old laptop. However, NOR flash has also been revolutionizing the embedded market as well. This was the key discussion in the session today, “NOR Flash Memory: Instant-on Experience in Electronics.”

I moderated the session featuring a panel discussion with industry partners, Jameel Hussein, technical marketing manager, Xilinx and Tony Xia, product marketing manager, NXP, along with my colleague, Avo Kanadjian, VP of marketing, Spansion. The session opened with a presentation by Spansion Fellow, Cliff Zitlaw, describing the Instant-On experience NOR delivers in electronics.

NOR Flash memory has distinct advantages in embedded applications

As Cliff presented, NOR Flash memory currently provides the lowest initial latency and highest data integrity of all non-volatile memory products. This has been the case since its inception and it continues today as performance and pin efficiency increases with interface enhancements. For many applications, NOR’s key advantage is its initial access speed. To illustrate, in the time it takes to complete one NAND access of a 128B file transfer, a NOR device can complete 71 transfers. But just how does this advantage enable today’s advanced electronics?

With Xilinx FPGA applications, NOR Flash memory is used to store configuration bitstreams, user data storage and code storage. NOR’s high throughput and error-free operation is critical for fast configuration of the FPGA. PCIe, CAN network, handheld and consumer FPGA applications all require very fast configuration to meet end-user performance expectations.

Likewise, the high throughput of quad-mode Serial flash memory in particular is opening up entirely new uses for NXP’s low-power microcontrollers. With the Flash memory operating at 70-95% of the core frequency, you can XiP right out of the Flash and bypass the need for any additional memory thanks to the SPIFI Flash interface in NXP MCUs. SPIFI exposes the SPI Flash in the main memory map and is treated like on-chip Flash, allowing for maximum performance. Graphics, like LCD images, can stream from the Flash and even raster directly– all from a very pin efficient footprint provided by the serial interface.

Making a difference in life

2D and 3D graphics, animation and video are finding a home in games, learning devices and even automotive instrument clusters; requiring the fast random read performance of NOR Flash memory. Since consumers today are requiring a more immersive, instant-on experience from all their electronics, you could say that “the flashiness of the game is driving the flashiness in the system” – all pun intended.

All of this 24×7 connectivity is having an effect on power consumption. The set-top box in particular is becoming one of the largest power drains in the home, consuming more energy than a refrigerator according to a recent New York Times article. To combat this, devices will need to use deep power-down sleep modes which creates another need for instant-on performance to turn on programming.

Beyond the tablets, smartphones and enterprise SSDs, NAND and NOR Flash memory is growing and making an impact throughout all our lives at work, on the road, at home and at play.