February 23, 2006 – Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. said it is making the driver source code for its OneNAND flash memory publicly available, in an effort to generate interest from the open source community, particularly for designers using the Linux v2.6 operating system.

The memory, used with mobile devices and other consumer electronics, incorporates a single-level-cell NAND core with SRAM and logic elements to emulate a NOR Flash interface. It offers sustained data “read” speed of 108 MByte/sec, 4x faster than conventional NAND flash memory, and a “write” speed of 10 MByte/sec, more than 60x faster than multilevel-cell NOR flash memory.

“Open source code has become one of the main forces driving the accelerated pace at which consumers are embracing mobility, so our decision to make OneNAND available for open designs should be very well-received,” said Jon Kang, SVP of technical marketing at Samsung Semiconductor Inc.