Winbond Electronics Corporation America, a wholly owned subsidiary of Taiwan-based Winbond Electronics, has announced production release of the two newest members in its SpiFlash 25X family of serial flash memory. The W25X16 and W25X32 SpiFlash, which feature 16Mb and 32Mb densities, respectively, are housed in an 8-pin SOIC package. Utilizing Winbond's 0.
13-micron Winstack technology, the W25X16 and W25X32 SpiFlash build on the success of Winbond's popular W25X family of SpiFlash memory. The new devices feature the popular serial peripheral interface (SPI) supporting both single-SPI and dual-SPI operation. The W25X16 and W25X32 also include uniform 4KB erasable sectors, in addition to earlier-generation 64KB blocks.
The smaller 4KB sectors allow for efficient memory allocation and storage of data, and are required in many Intel-based PC applications. Their packaging, performance and flexibility make the W25X16 and W25X32 ideal serial flash solutions for a variety of electronic applications, including desktop and notebook PCs, DVD players and recorders, WLAN and DSL equipment, digital TVs, set-top-boxes (STBs), printers, and industrial-control systems. The 25X dual-SPI feature, first introduced by Winbond in early 2006, has become a popular method for increasing SPI transfer rates when shadowing code to RAM and, in some cases, even for executing code directly from the SPI interface.
Reflecting the market acceptance of Winbond's groundbreaking work, several other manufacturers have since announced serial flash memory with dual-SPI capability. The popularity of the 25X line has set the stage for Winbond's next generation of SpiFlash memories featuring quad-SPI. Serial flash offers considerable advantages in pin-count, space and system cost, compared to parallel flash, said Robin Jigour, vice president of serial flash marketing at Winbond America.
However, slower transfer rates have limited their acceptance in some applications. The dual-SPI feature is an effective first step but much higher performance is still needed before Serial Flash can overcome the performance advantages of parallel flash memories. To address this need, Winbond will introduce a new class of high-performance serial flash memories later this year.
The new family features quad-SPI with six times the transfer rate of standard serial flash and greater performance than most parallel flash memories. This new line is targeted at applications that execute code directly from the SPI bus to significantly reduce system costs. Web-Feet Research, a leading market research firm tracking the flash memory industry, projects serial flash shipments in 2007 of 1.
4 billion units, and more than 2 billion units by 2009, surpassing parallel NOR flash unit sales, according to Winbond. Over this time period 16Mb and 32Mb serial flash applications will grow to 30% of the market. As applications migrate from parallel to serial flash, performance-enhancing features such as dual- and quad-SPI will become increasingly important.
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