e-MMC flash is a memory used and targeted towards many “consumer electronics” applications (and the CPU’s that support this market).
However, there are also embedded applications that appreciate a managed NAND flash for SD card replacement and other embedded storage needs.
The memory interface, on the block diagram of the host controller, is “e-MMC” or “MMC” and is similar to “Secure Digital” . Engineers are attracted to the e-MMC NAND memory because it includes the NAND flash management through an embedded NAND flash controller (vs raw or discrete NAND).
As NAND flash geometries shrink, raw NAND is becoming more complex to manage in terms of dealing with increased ECC requirments, wear leveling, and bad-block management. NAND flash is also very volatile in terms of roadmap changes that require updates to software and perhaps even controller revisions. e-MMC is backward compatible and has a standard interface so changes to the NAND are transparent to the application.
Capacities range from 2GB up to 64GB in a single BGA package. BGA package layout is scaleable between capacites with only a larger BGA outline required for the higher capacities with additional "no-connect" balls on BGA for stability
Avnet e-MMC Suppliers include: Kingston, Micron, Toshiba, SanDisk and Samsung. Greenliant a spin-off of SST offers a SATA version of this which is not pin compatible.
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