Hyundai plea for uniform flash design

Electronic News, Feb 9, 1998 by Will Wade

San Jose, Calif.--Tired of being forced to choose between two major players, at least one flash chip manufacturer is calling for standardization within the industry. Hyundai Electronics America, a second source for flash products based on AMD's single power supply design, is betting the older, dual-supply design has run its course and is hoping that the main advocate for dual-supply design, Intel, will eventually shift its product line to adopt the single-supply model.

"In the flash business, vendors are going in all directions with different features and technologies," said Steven Grossman, senior VP and GM of the flash division at Hyundai. "Right now, two major players are offering the same basic part." That basic part, flash chips used for code storage, comes in two, incompatible versions from flash giants Intel and AMD. And Mr. Grossman said the industry would probably benefit if the two could come to some sort of agreement and standardize their products.

Dual power chips have been around longer. They feature two power pins, one used for programming and the other for reading. Single pin chips are newer, and use only one power pin to support both operations. Mr. Grossman argues that there is little reason to use the older designs, and that the modern architecture can take up less space on the board and reduce silicon costs.

He terms the dual-supply chips an anomaly. "(The dual-supply design) doesn't provide any extra value," he said. "I think everybody, if they sat around and thought about it for a while, would agree." The impact of this division in the industry is obvious. OEMs must choose one design for their products, and second-source firms like Hyundai must do so as well. In effect, it divides the flash market into two opposing camps.

However, Intel does not predict any uniformity in the immediate future. While Matthew Campbell, product marketing engineer for flash at Intel, noted that there has been some standardization on issues such as packaging and design tools, the larger issue is likely to remain unresolved. "I would expect to see some further standardization efforts," he said, but added that Intel has no plans to adopt single-pin designs.

In fact, he points out one main advantage of their architecture. Using a dedicated pin for writing to the chips allows the OEMs to use more power when programming the devices. While this may occur only once in the lifetime of a chip, it can offer a significant time advantage. Intel's chips can handle up to 12 volts during programming, while most current single-supply devices can take only the same three volts they use for other functions. And with some flash chips now moving to 1.8V, that time difference may become even more of a factor.

"Our design allows more than 50 percent faster programming during manufacturing," said Mr. Campbell. While the difference between one minute and two minutes may not sound like a significant time-saver, OEMs who think in huge volumes can see thousands of minutes saved during a major production run.