75 billion units with embedded SuperFlash technology shipped

Through SST’s strong ecosystem of foundry, fabless and Integrated Device Manufacturer (IDM) partners, SuperFlash memory has become an important source of innovation and has helped Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) differentiate their automotive, consumer, industrial and medical products throughout the past three decades.

“As the semiconductor industry has gone fabless, more and more semiconductor companies are taking advantage of our differentiated nonvolatile memory IP solution through SST’s flexible licensing model,” said Mark Reiten, Vice President of Technology Licensing for SST. “As we have enabled a series of foundry, IDM and fabless partners, SuperFlash technology has become the hidden gem of innovation in the semiconductor industry. This technology is quietly reaching a majority of the world’s population through electronic devices and machines they depend on.”

SuperFlash technology was first introduced in high-volume production in 1995 with ESF-1 (the first generation of Embedded SuperFlash). The latest generation in development is ESF-3 for 28nm process nodes. From ESF-1 to ESF-3 the technology has proven to be scalable, compatible with standard manufacturing processes and highly reliable. It also contributes to reducing costs associated with high-volume production through high-yielding, area-optimised IP and low mask count foundry processes.

SuperFlash technology is based on a proprietary split-gate flash memory cell with the following capabilities:

• Low-power program, erase and read operations
• High performance with fast read access
• Good scalability from 1µm technology node to 28nm technology node
• High endurance cycling up to 500,000 cycles
• Excellent data retention of over 20 years
• Good performance at high temperature for automotive-grade applications
• Immunity to Stress-Induced Leakage Current (SILC)

“As more and more intelligence gets built into a plethora of applications, OEMs, IDMs, fabless companies and foundries can count on SST IP to build innovative products with fast time-to-market and high quality for many years to come,” said Reiten.