SanDisk, Samsung renew semiconductor agreements

SanDisk, Samsung sign agreements on chip cross-licensing and flash memory

* The Associated Press
* On Wednesday May 27, 2009, 11:09 am EDT

SanDisk Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. said Wednesday that they renewed their semiconductor cross-licensing agreement and struck a deal guaranteeing SanDisk a portion of Samsung's flash memory output.

The deal replaces an agreement that expires August 14 and runs for seven years.

The announcement sent shares of SanDisk, based in Milpitas, Calif., up $2.15, or 15.8 percent, to $15.72 in morning trading.

The companies did not disclose financial details of the arrangement.

South Korea-based Samsung is the world's largest supplier of NAND, a type of flash memory used in cell phones and digital cameras. The company offered last year to buy SanDisk for $26 a share. SanDisk rebuffed the offer and Samsung pulled out of its bid in October, after months of negotiations.

Samsung expands memory cards to 32GB

By Lucas Mearian, Computerworld (US)
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Samsung has announced a 32GB NAND memory card, the highest-density embedded memory card to date and one that offers twice the capacity of previous cards.



Samsung's 32GB moviNAND card is the first embedded memory card to use 32Gbit chips based on 30-nanometer lithography technology. Current moviNAND cards use 16Gbit chips based on 40nm-class technology.

Each 32GB moviNAND device incorporates eight Samsung 30nm-class 32Gb NAND chips, a multimedia card (MMC) controller and firmware. Samsung's 30nm moviNAND card is also available in 16GB, 8GB and 4GB capacities.

Due to an explosion in the amount of personal data stored on mobile devices, the use of higher-capacity memory cards is expected to grow exponentially in the next four years. Research firm iSupply expects an eight-fold growth in 32GB and larger memory cards by 2013.

About 120 million 16Gbit NAND-based cards have shipped to data, about 13 percent of global memory card shipments. By 2013, 950 million cards are expected to have shipped, making up 72 percent of the total world shipments, according to iSupply.

The new cards are aimed at high-end phones, music players and other mobile consumer electronics. Samsung said the higher-capacity cards offer better performance for processing and storing large amounts of multimedia content such as videos, video games and TV broadcasts.

Samsung's proprietary moviNAND chip uses a high-speed interface jointly developed by JEDEC and MMCA (MultiMediaCard Association) and the eMMCv4.3 specification that includes a power-on feature that reduces boot-up time and a sleep command to cut power consumption.