Samsung's High Density 10nm-Class NAND Chips Enter Mass Production

Samsung this week announced that it has begun mass producing a 128-gigabit (Gb), 3-bit multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chip using a 10nm-class process technology, which equates to somewhere between 10nm and 20nm. These chips will lead to high-density memory solutions such as embedded NAND storage and solid state drives (SSDs).

According to Samsung, these are the industry's highest density chips and also the best performing with 400Mbps data transfers based on the toggle DDR 2.0 interface. What that translates into for the consumer are bigger and faster storage solutions.

Samsung NAND

"By introducing next-generation memory storage products like the 128Gb NAND chip, Samsung is extremely well situated to meet growing global customer needs," said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president, memory sales & marketing, Device Solutions Division, Samsung Electronics. "The new chip is a critical product in the evolution of NAND flash, one whose timely production will enable us to increase our competitiveness in the high density memory storage market."

Specifically, Samsung said it plans to expands its supply of 128GB memory cards as well as ramp up production of SSDs with densities over 500GB. High-density chips are the key to terabyte-class SSDs, and as Crucial proved with its 960GB M500 drive (which uses 128Gb 20nm MLC NAND flash memory), they can be relatively affordable, too. Don't be surprised if Samsung takes its 840 Series to new capacity heights in the near future.