Tuesday Samsung announced that it had begun mass-producing the industry's first 3-bit-per-cell, 64 Gb (8 GB) MLC NAND flash chip using 20-nm-class processing. The news follows Samsung's introduction of 32 Gb (4 GB) 3-bit NAND flash using 30-nm-class processing last November, and the company's 32 Gb MLC NAND using 20-nm-class processing unleashed in April.
In addition to the larger capacity, Samsung's new NAND flash will use Toggle DDR (Double Data Rate) 1.0 specifications, offering a 60-percent higher productivity level than the previous 30-nm-class, 32 Gb 3-bit NAND using SDR (Single Data Rate).
"By now entering into full production of 20nm-class 64Gb 3-bit devices, we expect to accelerate adoption of our high-performance NAND solutions that use Toggle DDR technology, for applications that also require high-density NAND," said Seijin Kim, vice president, Flash Memory Planning/Enabling, Samsung Electronics.
Samsung's new 8 GB chips are expected to arrive in USB Drives, SD cards, smartphones and SSDs while replacing the current 4 GB (32 Gb) devices on the market. No particular timeframe was given however the new devices may begin to appear soon and offer 8 GB minimum and 64 GB maximum.
