Taking SSDs beyond half a terabyte: Sandisk's 32 nm flash

[dhilipkumar]

Taking SSDs beyond half a terabyte: Sandisk's 32 nm flash

Sandisk and Toshiba unveiled their new technologies at ISSCC 2009 yesterday and said that they will provide a foundation for more storage space in flash memory devices and reduce manufacturing costs. The 32 nm chip is said to maintain the performance levels of the 43 nm generation, which was first shown at ISSCC 2008 a year ago. The technology also uses a 3-bit per cell technology, which should make its way quickly into products such as Compact Flash and SDHC cards with up to 64 GB capacity as well as high-end consumer SSDs that should top 500 GB for the first time.

Samsung especially highlighted the benefits of such a small chip for microSD cards that are typically used as storage expansion in cellphones, as it provides twice the capacity of the 43 nm chip. The die size of a 32 Gb 32 nm chip is just 113 mm2. Mass production of this chip is expected to begin in the second half of this year.

The company also announced a new 43 nm product – a 4-bit per cell memory chip. The chip features a capacity of 64 Gb on a single die, which should be able drive down the cost of SSDs substantially. Sandisk said that the write performance of the chip is about 7.8 MB/s, which is close to current multi-level cell technologies. The company did not say when its "X4" technology will be ready for production.