March 12, 2007 – Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has begun shipping samples of an 8GB memory chip to major mobile electronics manufacturers. It is the highest density embedded flash memory developed to date, according to the company.

Samsung’s high-density moviNANDTM memory solution consists of four 50nm, 16Gb NAND flash memories, a high-speed MultiMediaCard (MMC) controller and associated firmware. It can store up to 2000 songs or enough map data to implement global positioning system (GPS) and points of interest for the entire western world. It can also be used with removable media cards to permit virtually unlimited memory expansion.

Because Samsung’s moviNAND allows NAND flash to be instantly accessed through a standardized MMC interface, manufacturers who use the new memory solution can develop mobile phones more quickly and at less cost than with raw MLC NAND components soldered into a handset, the company claims.

While providing twice the capacity and provides double the performance of the 4GB version, Samsung’s moviNAND is 10-20 percent smaller than other flash-based embedded memory card solutions. The new moviNAND also processes data at 52 MB/second, using a fast multimedia card interface.

Samsung’s moviNAND memory observes the eMMC standard jointly developed by JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) and MMCA (MultiMediaCard Association) for embedded flash memory applications. Samsung expects the market for moviNAND to reach an accumulated sales volume of US$4B by 2010.

Samsung plans to begin mass production of its 8GB moviNAND during 2Q07.