SAMSUNG Accelerates Evolution of the Mobile Era with Fusion Technology

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the leader in advanced semiconductor technology, unveiled today at the 2007 Samsung Mobile Solution Forum, held at the Westin Taipei Hotel, new mobile technology solutions that are designed to accelerate the technological evolution of mobile consumer electronics (CE).

The fourth annual event, hosted by Dr. Chang-Gyu Hwang, president of Samsung Electronics’ Semiconductor Business, was attended by approximately 1,000 IT industry professionals including PDA, handset, and original CE design manufacturers in Taiwan.

The main theme of the Samsung Mobile Solution Forum, designated as “Fusion Magic” technology, was to provide designers with the flexibility to tune new components to match the evolving features of mobile set applications and as a result, deliver more cost-effective ways of providing much higher performance. In all, five innovative mobile solutions were unveiled at the Forum that are expected to lead future trends in the mobile industry In his opening remarks, Dr. Hwang said, “Fusion Magic Technology, which began with handsets, has rapidly spread throughout the mobile industry. Our components are accelerating convergence, forming single-chip solutions to enable lighter, smaller and slimmer applications.”

The line-up introduced at the forum includes a new fusion semiconductor solution ? the Flex-OneNAND™; the industry’s first 1.8”-type 64Gigabyte (GB) flash-based solid state drive (SSD); an innovative embedded application processor solution with OneDRAMTM; the industry’s smallest 1.4㎛-pixel format, 8.4 megapixel (Mp) CMOS image sensor (CIS); and an embedded 2.1” quarter video graphics array (qVGA) TFT LCD with automatic light sensor.

Samsung underscored its Fusion Magic theme with the unveiling of Flex-OneNAND, a complex memory solution employing both single-level cell (SLC) NAND and multi-level cell (MLC) NAND. This new memory can be tuned from 2Gigabit to 4Gigabit in a single core to support evolving CE applications.

It allows the flash solution to be controlled at any time during the design/production cycle for each memory function within a multimedia device.

Another new solution exhibited at the Samsung Mobile Solution Forum was a high-density 1.8”-type flash-SSD, incorporating an 8Gigabit SLC NAND Flash.

By doubling the density and performance of last year’s 32GB SSD, the 64GB SSD provides the basis for SSDs to be adopted in the design of notebooks as well as sub-notebooks. In addition, new prototypes of SSDs are being tested in personal navigational systems and digital camcorders, as well as in server applications.

Sales of SSDs are expected to grow from US$200million this year to US$6.8billion in 2010, with SSDs becoming the mainstream application for NAND flash memory over the next four to five years.

A new package on package (PoP) chip presented by Samsung’s System LSI division at the Forum combines an application processor with a OneDRAM memory chip to form another fusion semiconductor solution. This chip offers a total solution for high-end mobile applications in such products as 3G and 3.5G smart phones, high-performance portable multimedia players (with computing features), and portable navigation systems. By exhibiting the PoP chip at the Forum, Samsung formally commenced a full-scale launching of its fusion semiconductor business based on this first chip to combine its System LSI Division’s world-class Mobile CPU with its Memory Division’s proprietary OneDRAM fusion memory.

Another highlight at the forum was the unveiling of a new high-resolution CMOS image sensor with the world’s smallest 1.4㎛pixel pitch and 8.4Mp resolution for digital cameras and camcorders as well as mobile phones.

In addition, Samsung’s LCD Business introduced a 2.1” qVGA LCD panel at the Forum with embedded auto-light sensing features for longer battery life.

This application-oriented concept of fusing performance-enhancing functionalities together is the underlying basis of Samsung’s ‘Fusion Semiconductor’ initiative. This initiative, which began with the introduction of package-based solutions of multi-chip packages (MCPs), package on package (PoPs) configurations, and systems in packages (SIPs), was followed by a second generation of integrated silicon solutions combining the functionality of individual memory components with supporting software and logic (OneNAND).

The latest generation of fusion semiconductors is designed to marry two or more fundamentally different memory functions within a single system.

Samsung’s new OneDRAM and Flex-OneNAND memory solutions are the first examples of technologies embodying this third generation of fusion semiconductors, and highlight the increasing role of semiconductor technology within the system platform.

Samsung expects its fusion semiconductors to achieve US$10billion in accumulated sales over the next five years (through 2011).