Samsung Electronics said on the 7th that it will mass-produce "1 terabit (Tb • terabyte) 8th-generation V-NAND flash memory" (photo), the world's highest capacity NAND flash memory. In October, Samsung announced its plan to mass-produce the 8th-generation V-NAND flash memory during the year at the "Samsung Technology Day" held in Silicon Valley, USA, and made significant progress after about a month.
The mass-produced 8th-generation V-NAND flash memory will support a maximum speed of 2.4Gbps (gigabits per second). Compared with the 7th generation V-NAND flash memory, the speed is increased by about 1.2 times. Taking the 8th generation V-NAND flash memory as the forerunner, Samsung Electronics plans to lead the next-generation enterprise high-capacity server market while expanding its business field to the automotive market that requires high reliability.
In the future, Samsung Electronics' goal is to mass-produce the 9th-generation V-NAND flash memory in 2024 and develop 1,000-layer V-NAND by 2030. Beginning in July, in addition to the existing NAND processes in Gyeonggi Hwaseong, Pyeongtaek and Xi'an, China, the 3rd line in Gyeonggi-Pyeongtaek has also started mass production of NAND, expanding productivity.
A variety of innovative technology development is also ongoing. The most representative examples include high-performance and low-power consumption products most suitable for data centers, "computer storage" that strengthens the internal computing function of solid-state drives (SSD), and "Zoned storage" that can operate large-capacity storage more efficiently. Storage)" etc.
Samsung Electronics has been occupying the No. 1 position in the global NAND flash memory market since 2002. According to the market research agency Omdia, based on the second quarter of this year (April to June), Samsung Electronics has a 33.3% share of the global NAND flash memory market, ranking first. In second place is SK Hynix (including Solidigm • 20.4%), and third place is KIOXIA (16.0%).
Although Samsung Electronics did not disclose the number of stacked layers of the 8th generation V NAND, the industry speculates that it is the highest number of layers for mass production standards. Competing company Micron announced mass production of 232-layer NAND in July, and SK Hynix announced in August that it had successfully developed 238-layer NAND flash memory chips.
Heo Sung-hui, vice president of the Flash Memory Development Office of Samsung Electronics' Memory Business Unit, said, "The fundamental technology that controls the interference phenomenon that occurs with the increase in the number of V-NAND layers has also been secured, and will satisfy the market's demand with the 8th-generation V-NAND. demand, and provide more differentiated products and solutions.”
