A Chat About Micron's ClearNAND Technology

ECC increases as process geometries shrink

SSD using Two 8-Die, 100-Ball BGA packages

Standard NAND versus ClearNAND

Enhanced ClearNAND Architecture

SSD using 8 die in 100-Ball BGA packages

ClearNAND Interrupt# operation timing

Copyback Using Enhanced ClearNAND Flash

NAND Flash ECC trends have been on the rise since NAND was first introduced. Although it’s not a new issue, the ECC required to support newer multilevel (MLC) and three-bit-per-cell technologies is becoming increasingly difficult for system designers to keep up with.

Micron Technology looks to attack this problem with its new ClearNAND technology. I recently spoke with Jim Cooke, Senior Technical Marketing Manager with Micron, about this issue and ClearNAND.

Wong: How has ECC been used with NAND flash in the past?

Cooke: ECC has historically been used to improve the overall data reliability of NAND subsystems. However, as NAND cells shrink, fewer electrons are stored per floating gate. To compensate for the increasing bit error rates of these smaller geometry cells, ECC requirements have to dramatically increase to maintain the desired system reliability.

As system requirements for ECC increase, the number of gates required to implement the logic also increases, as does the system complexity. For example, 24 bits of ECC requires about 200,000 gates, while 40 bits of ECC requires about 300,000 gates. It is estimated that in the future, advanced algorithms will approach close to 1 million gates (Fig. 1).

Many high-performance flash systems require multiple channels of NAND to reach the desired performance. In these systems, each channel typically has its own ECC logic. For example, a 10-channel SSD may have 10 channels of ECC logic implemented. If 60 bits of ECC were required for each of the 10 channels, the result would be 3 million gates just for the ECC logic.

Wong: What interface options are available with NAND flash?

Cooke: There are a number of options available. These include Legacy NAND, Direct NAND and now ClearNAND.

Legacy NAND Interface

The NAND interface has traditionally been an asynchronous interface. Although interface speeds have improved up to 50 MHz in recent years, not much else has changed on this interface.

Several years back, Micron and several other forward-thinking companies joined together to form a NAND Flash organization that was focused on simplifying the myriad of timing and command specifications offered by the industry. The Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) developed the first version of their specification, ONFI 1.0. While there are many advantages to the original ONFI 1.0 specification, one of the biggest is the ability for the host to electronically detect the type of Flash device that is connected, as well as other important parameters, like timing modes, page size, block size, ECC requirements. This feature has been carried forward to all of the ONFI specifications and remains an important aspect of all ONFI standards.

Another significant accomplishment of the ONFI organization was the development of the synchronous NAND interface, also known as ONFI 2. ONFI 2.2 currently supports up to 200 mega transfers per second (200 MT/s) using a DDR, source-synchronous interface. That is, after powering up, it can be used in asynchronous mode. However, for higher performance, the host can interrogate the Flash device to see if it is able to support the higher-speed synchronous interface before changing to it.

Direct NAND Solutions

Implementations that connect NAND directly to the host processor or SSD controller are responsible for managing the NAND. Hardware manages the ECC, while software typically performs all block management and wear-leveling operations. At first this may seem like a disadvantage. However, with today’s typical embedded processors running at speeds of hundreds of megahertz and often over one gigahertz, these high-performance processors can accomplish block management much faster and can take advantage of deterministic, multithreading techniques to improve performance. In addition, with the host managing the Flash device directly, the host software can make real-time decisions that can help eliminate exposure to unexpected power failures.

The ONFI 2.2 specification (200 MT/s) was designed to accommodate up to 16 standard NAND loads (Fig. 2). A typical implementation of this would be using two 8-die NAND packages. The standard 8-die, 100-ball BGA package includes two separate NAND buses (DQ\\[7:0\\]1 and DQ\\[7:0\\]2), with each bus having four NAND Flash wired together. Each of the four die stacks are controlled with two chip enables. A typical design would wire the two data or DQ buses together, forming a single 8-bit data bus for each package. A maximum configuration would consist of two 100-ball BGA packages, each containing eight die. Each of these standard 100-ball BGA packages requires four chip enables (CE#) to select a specific NAND die. Thus, the host or SSD controller needs to supply eight chip enables to support this configuration.

ClearNAND Solutions

Figure 3 shows two system implementations: a traditional system where the processor or SSD controller is interfacing directly with NAND and a system using ClearNAND Flash. Both implementations use the same ONFI hardware interface and similar 100-ball BGA ballouts. The ClearNAND example includes a thin controller package with the NAND die in an MCP. The ClearNAND controller implements the ECC required by the NAND inside the MCP package. Utilizing the same ONFI asynchronous or synchronous interface allows designers to migrate easily from standard NAND to ClearNAND Flash.

Wong: Micron has two versions of ClearNAND. Why and what are the differences?

Cooke: Micron offers two versions of ClearNAND Flash: Standard and Enhanced. Standard ClearNAND Flash, suggested mainly for consumer devices, implements the required ECC and provides a traditional asynchronous ONFI bus for easy migration.

Enhanced ClearNAND Flash manages ECC, in addition to offering several performance-enabling features that are of most value to enterprise applications. It also supports both the asynchronous and synchronous versions of the ONFI 2.2 interface and is available in densities up to 64GB.

By abstracting the ECC, both versions of ClearNAND Flash will be able to handle the additional ECC that future versions of NAND will require. This will eliminate the need for designers to continually redesign their circuitry to keep up with manufacturers’ latest NAND ECC requirements.

Wong: Can you tell us more about the enhanced version of this technology?

Cooke: The Enhanced ClearNAND architecture (Fig. 4) supports a single ONFI 2.2 interface and up to 200 MT/s command, address and data bus. The VDDI decoupling capacitor is common in e·MMC products and other devices that include a controller. It is required to decouple the internal voltage regulator. For backward compatibility with standard NAND devices, the VDDI connection is located on an unused pin. The ClearNAND controller supports two internal flash buses, one for even logical unit number or LUNs and one for odd LUNs. These two independent flash buses can operate at up to 200 MT/s. In addition, each bus has its own ECC engine and can manage simultaneous READ or WRITE operations on the two buses. It is envisioned that future versions of the controller will support the ONFI 3 specification, which is targeting up to 400 MT/s.

Enhanced ClearNAND Features and Benefits

Wong: ClearNAND has a number of features like volume addressing, electronic data mirroring, interrupt function and internal copyback. Can you address each of these?

Cooke: Sure. Let's start with volume addressing.

Volume Addressing

Volume addressing allows a single chip select or chip enable (CE#) to address up to 16 ClearNAND volumes. Each ClearNAND controller can support up to eight die packaged in an MCP. The ClearNAND controller provides a buffer for the host or SSD controller access.

The Enhanced ClearNAND design (Fig. 5) offers an eightfold improvement in density while maintaining or improving signal integrity and reducing the active number of chip enables that are required. This is because a single ClearNAND controller represents only one load to the SSD controller, but supports up to eight NAND die in the MCP package.

There are two aspects to the volume addressing concept. The first is establishing the volume address for each of the ClearNAND packages. The volume address is appointed only once at initialization and is maintained until the power is cycled. The second aspect is the volume select command itself. This is a new command that is followed by a single byte (actually only 4 bits) volume address. Once the intended volume is selected, it remains selected until another volume is selected. The chip enable pin savings can be significant. For example, a 32-channel SSD requires eight chip enables to control two 8-die standard NAND packages. The 32-channel example would require a total of 256 chip enable pins whereas the Enhanced ClearNAND volume addressing feature can address the same amount of NAND using only 32 chip enable pins. What's more, these same 32 chip enable pins can be used to address eight times the density.

Electronic Data Mirroring

Enhanced ClearNAND supports electronic data mirroring, which allows the data bus signal order to be electronically remapped to one of two configurations. This is particularly useful for high-density designs with ClearNAND devices mounted on both the top and bottom of the PCB. The ClearNAND package is able to electronically detect if it is mounted on the top or bottom of the PCB. This is accomplished using a specific initialization or reset sequence. For example, it is common practice to issue a reset or FFh command to the Flash device on power-up. To accomplish the electronic DQ mirroring, the host must follow this FFh command with the traditional READ STATUS (70h) command. The top die detects this command sequence as FFh-70h; the bottom die recognizes this same sequence as FFh-0Eh and can establish that it is the bottom package and reorder its data bus to align directly under the top die. This not only improves PCB routing but also improves signal integrity.

Ready/Busy# Redefined to Interrupt

Enhanced ClearNAND Flash redefines the existing ready/busy# pin to be an interrupt pin. The interrupt# signal (Fig. 6), which is still open-drain, provides a real-time interrupt when the ClearNAND volume or die becomes ready. Designers can use this interrupt signal to provide real-time status to the host or SSD controller. In larger configurations supporting multiple ClearNAND packages on a single bus, the interrupt# signals can be wired together. When the host or SSD controller detects an interrupt, it can simply interrogate each of the ClearNAND packages or volumes to learn which volume has posted the new status. This interrupt function can save signals on the host or SSD controller while improving the ability for the SSD controller to respond to status updates.

Internal Copyback

The last but perhaps most noteworthy feature of Enhanced ClearNAND Flash is the internal COPYBACK function, also known as INTERNAL DATA MOVE. This function can provide a significant advantage in SSD systems when it comes to wear leveling or garbage collection operations; that is, the process of collecting fragments of data scattered throughout the various pages and blocks of the NAND and coalescing them in a more streamlined block or sequence of blocks. It is similar to the old hard disk defragmentation utility.

Referring back to Figure 2, when using standard NAND, moving data fragments from one block to another typically requires the following sequence of operations:

• The SSD controller issues a READ command and source address to access the source page of data.
• The SSD controller inputs data from the NAND device while calculating and making any necessary ECC corrections. Any updating of data or metadata is usually accomplished after this step.
• The SSD controller calculates and appends the new ECC information before issuing a new PROGRAM command, destination address, and data sequence, which will store the data in the new NAND block.

In this sequential operation, the bus is busy while moving the source and destination data from and to the Flash device. The timing of these operations can be significant. An ONFI 2.2 synchronous bus operating at 200 MT/s would require about 41µs to move the data, assuming an 8K page. Since the data has to be moved from and to the Flash device, we double this time to 82µs, which doesn’t include the ECC overhead. While this sequence is being carried out, the ONFI Flash bus is busy and cannot be used for other operations.

Enhanced ClearNAND Flash is different in that it supports internal ECC. Using this built-in ECC allows the COPYBACK operation to be performed internal to the Enhanced ClearNAND package, assuming the source and destination of the data are within the ClearNAND package. The SSD controller is still responsible for issuing the commands and addresses as well as any modified data or metadata. The data movement is handled by the ClearNAND controller and does not tie up the external ONFI bus. If the SSD controller is able to keep its wear leveling and garbage collection operations within a single ClearNAND package, it can have significant performance advantages.

Figure 7 shows an example using Enhanced ClearNAND on two ONFI channels labeled channel 0 and channel 1. On both SSD channels, we can see that four of the INTERNAL DATA MOVE operations are occurring simultaneously without the external ONFI bus being used for the data movement. This frees the SSD controller and ONFI bus to move data from one ClearNAND package to another, if necessary. Depending on your architecture, some percentage of these operations may need to go between ClearNAND packages or even between ONFI buses. Taking advantage of the INTERNAL DATA MOVE operation can provide a significant performance improvement for garbage collection and wear-leveling operations.

Wong: Great. Could you give us a quick summary of Enhanced ClearNAND's features?

Cooke: Micron’s Enhanced ClearNAND Flash provides additional performance and features while eliminating the impact of NAND’s ever-increasing ECC requirements. Because Enhanced ClearNAND supports a ballout similar to the standard 100-ball BGA NAND devices, it's possible to design your product to support both. An example would be to include enough ECC in your host SSD controller to support SLC NAND Flash directly and select Enhanced ClearNAND Flash for your multilevel cell needs, where ECC can present more of a challenge.

The volume addressing feature of Enhanced ClearNAND enables higher densities to be addressed using fewer chips, saving potentially hundreds of pins in SSD implementation. Electronic data mirroring simplifies PCB design and routing while improving the signal integrity of the ONFI bus. The intelligent interrupt function provides for real-time status updates to the SSD controller and minimizes the polling for firmware. The dual internal NAND Flash buses provide improved COPYBACK operations, which in turn improve performance.

• Micron Technology
• Micron ClearNAND