Winbond supports accelerated roll-out of 5G CPE modems

The W71NW20KK1KW combines robust Single Level Cell (SLC) NAND Flash and high-speed, low-power LPDDR4x memory, so as to provide sufficient memory capacity for 5G cellular modems that are intended for use as Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) in homes and offices.

While mobile 5G modems typically require larger memory densities, static 5G CPE modems can operate perfectly with memory capacities of 2Gb NAND/2Gb DRAM. By offering this memory combination in a compact single package, Winbond will enable 5G modem manufacturers to meet the system requirements of CPE units at much lower material and production cost.

According to the company, the introduction of a new generation of cost-optimised 5G CPE units incorporating the W71NW20KK1KW will help to accelerate consumer adoption of 5G as an alternative to fixed-line copper or optical xDSL links in the last mile of high-speed broadband networks.

Wilson Huang, product marketing manager at Winbond, said: ‘The 2Gb+2Gb MCP from Winbond is intended for the cellular market’s next phase of growth as it starts to install static 5G CPE units at homes and offices.

‘Winbond is the only MCP chip manufacturer that produces both NAND and LPDDR4x in its own wafer fabrication plants. Because Winbond is completely in control of the production of the memory components, customers ordering the W71NW20KK1KW MCP in production volumes can rely on our supplying the quantities and meeting schedules, quality and service.’

The W71NW20KK1KW is a 149-ball Ball Grid Array (BGA) MCP consisting of a 2Gb SLC NAND Flash die and a 2Gb LPDDR4x DRAM die. The SLC NAND Flash offers endurance specifications and high data integrity. The SLC NAND only requires 4-bit ECC to achieve high data integrity, but the device’s 2KB+128B page size provides enough space for the use of 8-bit ECC.

The W71NW20KK1KW has an 8-bit bus, and is organised in blocks of 64 pages. The NAND die’s performance specifications include a maximum page Read time of 25µs and a typical page program time of 250µs.

The LPDDR4x DRAM die, which operates at a high frequency of 1866MHz, provides an LVSTL_11 interface and features eight internal banks for concurrent operation. It offers a data rate of up to 4267MT/s, supporting the fast data-transfer rates to be offered by 5G cellular networks.