Ever denser chips for ever greater flash storage capacity: these are the SSD who will be happy!
We started with NAND in 32 layers to quickly go to 64, 96, 112, 176 and even very recently 218 or 232 depending on the manufacturers. SK Hynix wants everyone to agree.
Productivity up 59%
After talking about it last March, the South Korean company has just presented the first samples of 321-layer NAND flash memory. From the NAND that the manufacturer baptizes NAND 4D as it does each time to distinguish its architecture from that of its colleagues.
The presentation was made during the Flash Memory Summit 2023 in Santa Clara, California, an event logically focused on flash memory and which takes place from August 8 to 10. For the occasion, SK Hynix made the presentation with 1 Tb (128 GB) memory in 321 layers that the company compared to previous generation chips, 512 Gb (64 GB) memory in 238 layers.
In either case, we always talk about so-called TLC memory for triple level cell or triple level cell, but SK Hynix is obviously very proud to announce ” a 59% improvement in productivity “.
Reduce production costs
Of course, the main interest of thus increasing the number of layers for NAND memory is to increase the capacity that can be produced from a single wafer and, in fact, to reduce production costs.
Costs that are important as we consider an explosion in flash storage needs with the gradual replacement of those good old platter hard drives for our data, but also and above all, with the needs of artificial intelligence. . Apps like ChatGPT hog huge amounts of data. According to SK Hynix, this new type of NAND is only one link in the chain with SSDs adopting PCIe Gen 5 and UFS 4.0.
At the same time, SK Hynix has also pointed out that it is now working on the next generations of PCIe Gen 6 and UFS 5.0. Jungdal Choi, Head of NAND Development clarified, “ with the timely introduction of high-performance and high-capacity NAND, we will strive to meet the demands of the AI era and continue to lead innovation “. We just dream of not too expensive 8 TB SSDs…
Source : TechPowerUp
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