JEDEC reveals serial flash standard

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association has released the JESD216: Serial Flash Discoverable Parameters (SFDP) for serial NOR flash. The SFDP will allow serial flash makers to insert a standard description of important device characteristics into the flash.

Users can read the description and obtain critical information about the functional characteristics and capabilities of SFDP compliant flash memory devices. This will enable user applications such as mobile phones, set-top boxes, HDTVs, PC/NB motherboards or any system that need to support multiple serial NOR flash to configure themselves to handle various serial flash implementations.

JESD216 provides a consistent method of describing the functional and feature capabilities of serial flash devices in a standard set of internal parameter tables. These tables can be interrogated by host system software to enable adjustments needed to accommodate divergent features from multiple vendors. This way, SFDP offers more flexibility in vendor selection, reduces engineering resources for firmware upgrades and shortens the time to bring products to market, JEDEC stated.锟絋he value of SFDP emulates and enhances that of the Common Flash Interface (CFI) for parallel flash.