Samsung Kicks Off Mass Production Of Industry Fastest 256Gb V-NAND For High Performance SSDs

Samsung has announced that it has begun mass production of a new type of Flash storage chip. The company's fifth-gen V-NAND has the fastest data transfer speed in the industry and is the first to use the Toggle DDR 4.0 NAND interface. That new interface improves the speed for transmitting data of the 256Gb V-NAND to over 1.4 Gbps. That is a 40% gain in performance for this new Samsung 90-layer NAND technology, compared to Samsung's 64-layer predecessor.

Samsung says that the new V-NAND (Vertically stacked NAND) has energy efficiency comparable to the old 64-layer chip because the operating voltage for the fifth-gen part has been reduced from the 1.8 volts required for that old part to 1.2 volts. The write speed of the new V-NAND is 500-microseconds representing a 30% improvement over the write speed of the outgoing generation. Samsung also reduced the response time to read signals to 50-microseconds.

The new V-NAND has over 90 layers of 3D Charge Trap Flash (CTF) cells. Samsung claims highest density in the industry currently. Those layers are stacked in a pyramid structure with microscopic via channel holes vertically drilled throughout. While the holes are only a few hundred-nanometers wide, they contain more than 85 billion CTF cells with each cell capable of holding three bits of data.

Samsung also enhanced the N-NAND's atomic layer deposition process allowing for a 30% gain in manufacturing productivity. That process enhancement allows the height of each cell layer to be cut by 20% helping to prevent crosstalk between cells and increase the efficiency of the chip's data processing.

"Samsung’s fifth-generation V-NAND products and solutions will deliver the most advanced NAND in the rapidly growing premium memory market," said Kye Hyun Kyung, executive vice president of Flash Product and Technology at Samsung Electronics. "In addition to the leading-edge advances we are announcing today, we are preparing to introduce 1-terabit (Tb) and quad-level cell (QLC) offerings to our V-NAND lineup that will continue to drive momentum for next-generation NAND memory solutions throughout the global market."