The Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) Working Group has introduced a new specification.

ONFI 2.1 offers simplified flash controller design and increases performance levels to 166-200MBps

"The ONFI Workgroup is committed to delivering the NAND component building blocks necessary for high performance and cost effective SSD and cache solutions," Amber Huffman, principal engineer, Intel and ONFI technical chair, told IT Examiner. "ONFI 2.1 provides the next evolution of features to meet this goal."

ONFI spokesperson Deb Paquin explained that increased performance per NAND device of 200MBps was important for several reasons. 

"First, as NAND page sizes grow at smaller NAND lithographies the speed boost ensures low latency access by balancing the NAND array time with the bus transfer time," said Paquin. "Secondly, it enables more cost-optimised solid-state drive designs with fewer NAND channels. And finally, it enables solid-state drive designs to more efficiently achieve the bandwidth offered by Serial ATA 6GBps, USB 3.0, and PCI Express Gen2. This will benefit users from enterprise applications all the way to consumer and corporate laptop uses."

Mark Leinwander, a system architecture manager at Numonyx, expressed similar sentiments.

"ONFI provides a strong platform for next generation embedded and consumer electronics devices," said Leinwander. "Creating system-level standards for memory is fundamental for the evolution of the Flash NAND industry, and Numonyx is proud to contribute to this effort. Building on the standardised command set and pin-out, provided by the ONFI 1.0 specification, the ONFI 2.1 release helps set the foundation for next-generation high-speed applications." X