Micron Technology claimed today to be the first company to sample an 8Gb single-level cell (SLC) high-speed Nand Flash memory product.

High-speed Nand memory enables data to be transferred in a fraction of the time of conventional Nand.

Micron claimed that its high-speed SLC chip can read data at speeds up to 200Mbps and can write data at up to 100Mbps.

The higher data rates are delivered using the Open Nand Flash Interface 2.0 specification and a four-plane architecture with higher clock speeds.

Conventional SLC Nand is limited to 40Mbps for reading data and less than 20Mbps for writing data.

"As more of today's popular electronic and computing devices move to silicon for storage, it is essential that we improve how data is accessed and transferred in Nand," said Bill Lauer, senior director of marketing at Micron's memory group.

"With the new capabilities designed into high speed Nand the performance benefits will be visible to the consumer, allowing them to experience a faster way of transferring digital content between computers, cameras, MP3 players and phones."

Micron's 8Gb SLC high-speed Nand component is sampling now to major OEMs and controller manufacturers. Mass production is expected to commence in the second half of 2008.