Comparison of NorFlash, NandFlash and eMMC (3)

　　eMMC

eMMC (Embedded MulTI Media Card), established by the MMC Association, is a standard specification of embedded memory for products such as mobile phones or tablets. EMMC integrates a controller in the package, provides standard interfaces and manages flash memory, allowing handset manufacturers to concentrate on other parts of product development and shorten the time to launch products to the market. These characteristics are equally important for NAND vendors who want to reduce lithography size and cost.

Structure

It consists of an embedded storage solution with an MMC (Multimedia Card) interface, a flash memory device, and a master controller, all in a small BGA package. eMMC has fast and upgradeable performance, whose interface speeds is up to 52 M Bytes per second and interface voltage can be 1.8v or 3.3v.

Application

eMMC is mainly applied to consumer electronics product that has a high demand for storage capacity. In addition, it is used in some popular products that have been heavily produced in 2011, such as Palm Pre, Amazon Kindle II and Flip MinoHD. To confirm exactly what kind of memory these products are using, iSuppli took advantage of the disassembly analysis business to disassemble them and found that eMMC was in them.

Advantages

1.Simplify the design of mobile phone memory. eMMC is currently the most popular local storage solution for mobile devices, aiming to simplify the design of mobile phone memory. As the different brands of NAND flash chips include Samsung, KingMax, Toshiba, Hynix, and Micron, etc. it needs to be redesigned mobile phone memory according to the product and technologies of each company. However, there was no technology to universalize all-brand NAND flash chip in the past.

2. Fast updatable speed. Every time NAND flash process technology changes, including from 70 nm to 50 nm, and then 40 nm or 30 nm process technology, mobile phone customers have to redesign memory. But every year semiconductor products process technology will be renew, memory problems are also dragging down the speed of introducing mobile phones, So the concept of packaging all the memory and NAND flash control chips on a single MCP, like eMMC, is becoming popular in the market as it continues to evolve.

3. Speed up product development. The design concept of eMMC is to simplify the use of memory in mobile phone. NAND flash chip and control chip are designed into single MCP chip, thus, mobile phone customers only need to purchase a EMMC chip and put it into a new phone, rather than dealing with other complex issues about NAND flash compatibility and management. The biggest advantage is to shorten the marketing cycle and to reducing R & D cost, speeding up product development.