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The Open NAND Flash Interface Working Group (ONFI or ONFi〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=ONFI web site presentation page )〕 with a lower case "i"), is a consortium of technology companies working to develop open standards for NAND flash memory and devices that communicate with them. The formation of ONFI was announced at the Intel Developer Forum in March 2006. == History== The group's goals did ''not'' include the development of a new consumer flash memory card format.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=ONFI FAQ page )〕 Rather, ONFI seeks to standardize the low-level interface to raw NAND flash chips, which are the most widely used form of non-volatile memory integrated circuits (chips); in 2006, nearly one trillion MiB of flash memory was incorporated into consumer electronics, and production was expected to double by 2007. , NAND flash memory chips from most vendors used similar packaging, had similar pinouts, and accepted similar sets of low-level commands. As a result, when more capable and inexpensive models of NAND flash become available, product designers can incorporate them without major design changes. However, "similar" operation is not optimal:〔 See section "The Curse of Similarity" in this white paper by Arun Kamat of Hynix.〕 subtle differences in timing and command set mean that products must be thoroughly debugged and tested when a new model of flash chip is used in them.〔 When a flash controller is expected to operate with various NAND flash chips, it must store a table of them in its firmware so that it knows how to deal with differences in their interfaces.〔〔 This increases the complexity and time-to-market of flash-based devices, and means they are likely to be incompatible with future models of NAND flash, unless and until their firmware is updated. Thus, one of the main motivations for standardization of NAND flash was to make it easier to switch between NAND chips from different producers, thereby permitting faster development of NAND-based products and lower prices via increased competition among manufacturers. By 2006, NAND flash became increasingly a commodity product,〔See this (presentation ) by Amber Huffman and Michael Abraham of Micron.〕 like SDRAM or hard disk drives. It is incorporated into many personal computer and consumer electronics products such as USB flash drives, MP3 players, and solid-state drives. Product designers wanted newer NAND flash chips, for example, to be as easily interchangeable as hard disks from different manufacturers.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Open NAND Flash Interface Working Group」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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