Arasan Chip Systems has released its portable NAND flash file system software to complement its ONFI 2.2 NAND memory controller IP cores. Media players, gaming consoles, smartphones and netbooks have dramatically increased software and non-volatile data storage requirements with storage of boot code, proprietary data, security keys, media files and user generated content. The NAND flash file system abstracts the management of NAND memory, to ease its use by application level software. It automates handling of unwanted data collection, bad block management and wear-levelling management. The system is designed to be ported to multiple OS and platforms and support multiple file systems. It can interface to both SLC and MLC NAND memories, allowing the system designers to balance reliability and storage capacity. By integrating wear-levelling, the system extends the life of the NAND memory array. The system is also designed to have a low cost processor overhead so that it can be used in embedded devices for improved boot speed, higher security and reliability. The software is complemented with the company's NAND memory controller IP cores which support the latest ONFI 2.2 specification. The cores support the highest transfer modes of up to 166MBit/s (in sync mode 4) and 200MBits/s while incorporating the features of ONFI 2.2 such as enhanced power management, ECC information, interleaved reads and small data movement.
