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I wanted to know which one has better life span, NAND or NOR flash and what is the reason? By life span I mean the number of erase cycles allowed per block.

I read in the link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory that the endurance of NOR for SLC is much greater than NAND SLC, more than 10x. Endurance is the meausure of the number of P/E cycles allowed. Now if NOR has higher endurance, then does that mean NOR has better life span than NAND?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Endurance is basically the number of erase cycles allowed. It seems to me that what you call "life span" is exactly the same thing as endurance. NOR does have much greater endurance than NAND. You can also see this by looking at a few datasheets. The endurance will be specified in the datasheet. \$\endgroup\$ – mkeith Aug 2 '17 at 4:42
  • \$\begingroup\$ what is the reason for greater endurance in NOR? Also, if you see this link focus.ti.com/pdfs/omap/diskonchipvsnor.pdf, it gives a contradictory statement \$\endgroup\$ – Shankhadeep Mukerji Aug 2 '17 at 5:21
  • \$\begingroup\$ @mkeith Can it be a reason that NAND flash has FN tunneling for both prog and erase, so chances of electron trapping and thus lesser endurance for NAND compared to NOR. And NAND flash has bad block management so it can last longer than NOR? \$\endgroup\$ – Shankhadeep Mukerji Aug 2 '17 at 20:44
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    \$\begingroup\$ I do not know the reason. However, NAND flash memory density is much, much higher than NOR flash. So it stands to reason that it would be more fragile. The document you linked to is 15 years old, and not relevant anymore. Note that the listed maximum density for NAND flash is 128 Megabyte. NAND flash development has been extremely active for the last 15 years. One of the trends has been less and less endurance. \$\endgroup\$ – mkeith Aug 3 '17 at 3:34

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