Items tagged with 3d nand
Micron has just announced a breakthrough in 3D NAND density, announcing that it has started shipments of the world's first 176-layer 3D NAND flash memory. This is Micron's 5th generation 3D NAND technology and will usher in a new wave of storage products across a broad range of sectors. With the move to a 176-layer design, Micron says that both read and write latency has been improved in excess of 35 percent, while offering a die size that is 30 percent smaller than its competitive set. In addition, the company is quoting maximum data rates of up to 1,600 MT/s using the ONFI bus, which is a 33 percent improvement over current-generation 96-layer and 128-layer solutions. And in...
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Earlier today, reports started emerging that SK Hynix was in final talks to acquire Intel's NAND storage unit. Late tonight, the news has been confirmed by both parties and a deal has been reached. SK Hynix has agreed to purchase Intel's NAND memory and storage businesses for a total $9 billion. This represents a win-win for both companies, as Intel's storage business has consistently been a low-margin operation. Intel's SSDs have also traditionally not been up to snuff in performance compared to their mainstream PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 4.0 counterparts. As for SK Hynix, it gets to expand its NAND flash footprint to make it more competitive in high-growth areas like enterprise SSDs. The two...
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Western Digital is one of the biggest names in storage, and today the company announced it has developed its 5th generation 3D NAND flash memory technology called BiCS5. It is latterly denser than the previous generation of 3D NAND, and also offers more storage layers—112 of them, to be precise. These are important traits because they ensure companies can continue to crank out more capacious storage drives. There is also a performance benefit. According to Western Digital, its 112-layer BiCS5 3D NAND flash memory offers 40 percent more bits per wafer and up to 50 percent more input-output (I/O) performance than its previous generation 96-layer BiCS4 memory. "As we move into the next decade,...
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Back in September, we reported that Intel's CPU shortage could end up having a positive effect on the DRAM market for consumers. TrendForce said that the CPU shortage coupled with an oversupply in the DRAM market could lead to a quarter-over-quarter decrease of about 2 percent in pricing. Today, however, TrendForce division DRAMeXchange is getting a bit more aggressive in its analysis of the market, and is expecting larger declines in 2019 for both DRAM and NAND flash. In addition to the aforementioned Intel shortage, there is uncertainty in the server market, and smartphone demand has been "sluggish" due to many people sitting out the yearly upgrade cycle. DRAMeXchange...
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Toshiba has uncloaked its new XG6 Client NVMe SSDs that are targeted at OEM customers and will be installed in PCs that you’ll be able to purchase from a variety of manufacturers. The XG6 serves a successor to the existing XG5 family, but will sit alongside the XG5-P, which is offered in higher capacities. What makes the XG6 so interesting is that it is the world’s first SSD to use 96-layer BiCS 3D NAND flash memory. Compared to its 64-layer predecessors, the new 96-layer tech allows Toshiba to increase capacity per unit chip size by 40 percent. In addition, power consumption of 4.7 watts or less put the SSDs more on par with far slower SATA SSDs currently on market....
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WD recently updated its mainstream Blue line of solid state drives with new 64-layer 3D BiCS NAND flash memory. When we first took a look at the original WD Blue SSD, we found it to be an admirable performer with competitive pricing. This new generation of drives, however, promises better performance and features all of the firmware tweaks and optimizations WD has gleaned over the Blue SSD line’s lifetime.In addition, SanDisk branded versions of the drive are hitting the market as well. Internally the WD Blue with 3D NAND and new SanDisk Ultra 3D are virtually identical, but the drives will target different distribution channels. The WD Blue 3D is for do-it-yourselfers and is headed into the...
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Memory chip maker Hynix continues to make impressive (and fast) strides in the field of NAND flash memory. Having launched 36-layer 128-gigabit (Gb) three-dimensional (3D) NAND flash chips in April 2016 followed by mass production of 48-layer 256Gb 3D NAND chips just seven months later, the company is now touting the industry's first 72-layer 256Gb 3D NAND flash chips. Hynix is using its own technologies to build these new NAND flash chips, which are based on triple-level cell (TLC) memory. TLC NAND chips are typically found in budget oriented solid state drives (SSDs) as they're less expensive than their multi-level cell (MLC) counterparts, but reliability and performance are not on the same...
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Intel has been relatively quiet on the solid state drive (SSD) front lately, though the company has likely been devoting a lot time and resources to its upcoming 3D XPoint storage architecture. However today, the company has unleashed a flood of new SSD products that cover a broad spectrum of usage scenarios. All of the new SSD products make use of 3D NAND, while the cheapest of them can be had for less than $100. First up is the SSD 600p Series, which is offered in four capacities ranging from 128GB on up to 1TB, and is targeted at consumer desktops and notebooks. The SSDs are available in the M.2 form-factor, with the entry-level 128GB model offering sequential reads and writes of up to 770...
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Western Digital, a major player in the storage industry, announced this week that it has completed development of its next generation 3D NAND technology called BiCS3. Limited production is already underway in Japan with initial output expected later this year. If everything goes to plan, volume production will begin in the first half of next year. BiCS3 is the third generation of Bit-Cost Scalable NAND jointly developed between Western Digital and Toshiba. It's the world's first 64-layer 3D NAND solution, delivering the smallest chip area of any published 3D NAND. The initial plans are to deploy BiCS3 in 256 gigabit capacity followed by a range of capacities up to half a terabit on a single chip...
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At some point in time, solid state drives (SSDs) are likely to finally supplant mechanical hard disk drives (HDDs) just as USB thumb sticks replaced floppies, but it won't happen until the cost of NAND flash memory drops even further, paving the way for parity in terms of price-per-gigabyte. It may even happen sooner than later—BeSang Inc., inventor of 3D monolithic chip technology in 2010, claims to have found a way to reduce the cost of 3D NAND from over 20 cents per gigabyte to just around 2 cents per gigabyte. The path to cheaper 3D NAND lies in shrinking the cell size of the overall structure, which BeSang calls a "fundamental problem" of Samsung's approach to 3D NAND flash memory. "Samsung’s...
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NAND flash technology is advancing at a rapid clip, and that’s resulting in solid state drives (SSDs) that are faster, more capacious and cheaper (per GB). Look no further than Samsung’s announcement this week of its latest Vertical NAND (V-NAND) chips that allows for the ultra fast PM1725 NVMe SSD capable of delivering mind-blowing sequential read speeds of up to 5,500 megabytes per second. But if you think those read speeds are impressive, Samsung just made our jaws drop with the announcement of an incredible advancement on the storage density front. The company’s new PM1633a SSD manages to pack 16TB (the actually formatted capacity is 15.36TB) into a 2.5-inch-ish form-factor. You read that...
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