Samsung today said that it has developed a 2 Gb NAND Flash chip using a 60 nm production process. The new chip not only doubles the capacity of today's 1 Gb devices but, according to Samsung, also achieves faster writing speeds. Compared to the firm's currently produced OneNAND Flash that reaches sustained write speeds of 9.3 MB/s, the 60 nm version puts out 17 MB/s. Samsung claims that the chips write capacity can be increased up to 136 MB/s when eight of the 2 Gb memory chips are combined.

Samsung expects to use the technology not only in flash cards or chips for portable devices such as Apple's Ipod, but also as read/write buffer in hybrid hard drives. As previously reported, Samsung plans to ship its hybrid hard drive in concert with the launch of Windows Vista.