Intel Confirms 25nm NAND Flash for New SSDs

By Marcus Yam
published

Intel readies the next generation of NAND for SSDs.

Intel has announced that its 25nm NAND flash chips are now shipping in volume to customers.

Intel detailed in its brief announcement:

Announced in February, IMFT was the first to sample, and now to ship in production, 25nm NAND using the world's smallest, most advanced manufacturing process technology. The 8 gigabyte (GB) 25nm NAND flash memory chip measures just 167mm2 and can hold up to 2,000 songs, 7,000 photos or 8 hours of video. NAND Flash memory is used in USB memory keys and SD cards for data storage in digital camcorders and cameras, as well as in smart phones, personal music players and solid-state drives.

For those of you constantly keeping an eye on Intel SSD prices, expect this to soon trigger a new generation of roomier and/or cheaper drives.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
40 Comments Comment from the forums
  • nforce4max
    Goody goody maybe this will drive prices down a bit.
    Reply
  • gtvr
    And you know it's a real picture of a chip due to the cool rainbow effect!
    Reply
  • joytech22
    It'll drive the prices of other memory down, but the price of This particular memory would cost more? or does price go down when size decreases (less resources needed?)
    Reply
  • freggo
    So it can hold 2,000 songs.
    Seeing that, even at $.99/song, nobody can afford to pay that much to fill it up this is clearly promoting the use of illegaly copied music. Now let's see how long it will take for RIAA lawyers to come to that conclusion and start banning advertisers and tech reviewers to comment on the number of -illegal- songs a device can handle.

    After all, now that they got Usenet pretty much shut down they have some free time and billable hours available to search for a new target :-)

    Reply
  • scott_madison1
    I've been waiting to get a ssd. but the price of my left arm and possibly more depending on the drive has kept me at bay. Hopefully these new processes will make the technology more affordable.
    Reply
  • MindfieIds
    Great! More capacity in a smaller and faster hard drives.
    Reply
  • back_by_demand
    freggoSo it can hold 2,000 songs.Seeing that, even at $.99/song, nobody can afford to pay that much to fill it up this is clearly promoting the use of illegaly copied music. Now let's see how long it will take for RIAA lawyers to come to that conclusion and start banning advertisers and tech reviewers to comment on the number of -illegal- songs a device can handle.After all, now that they got Usenet pretty much shut down they have some free time and billable hours available to search for a new target :-)Yes, it's so obvious to me now, bigger hard drives costing less money is clearly promoting illegal downloading. Someone should have pointed this out to the MPAA and the RIAA years ago before those pesky HDD manufacturers pumped out 2Tb drives for less than $130 a pop. This is an outrage.
    Someone should write a letter to their Congressman
    Or the President
    SOMEONE CALL THE ARMY!!!!!
    CIVIL WAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    /sarcasm
    Reply
  • nimbus77
    I'll be visiting newegg for them
    Reply
  • anamaniac
    Gen3 Intel drives?
    Is it really happening?
    Finally?
    Already?
    It's been this long already?

    ...
    YAY!

    If you excuse me, I have to go cancel my the lease on my house so I can go buy a few of RAID those bad muthas!
    Reply
  • stryk55
    freggoSo it can hold 2,000 songs.Seeing that, even at $.99/song, nobody can afford to pay that much to fill it up this is clearly promoting the use of illegaly copied music. Now let's see how long it will take for RIAA lawyers to come to that conclusion and start banning advertisers and tech reviewers to comment on the number of -illegal- songs a device can handle.After all, now that they got Usenet pretty much shut down they have some free time and billable hours available to search for a new target :-)
    I'm sorry, but I missed the part in the article where it says that the 2,000 songs needed to be purchased from iTunes or downloaded illegally. I guess you have never purchased a CD, or "compact disc", in the past 2 decades. These "compact discs" contain music, and you can create digital copies for backup purposes. And the best part is these copies are completely legal!

    /mockingly

    Oh, and if you truly are someone who appreciates and enjoys music, spending close to $2,000 over the course of a year on music is not really a stretch...
    Reply