Samsung Electronics has announced it will be the first chip manufacturer in the world to mass produce 16 gigabit (Gb) NAND flash, the highest capacity memory chip now available.

 

May 3, 2007: Samsung Electronics has announced it will be the first chip manufacturer in the world to mass produce 16 gigabit (Gb) NAND flash, the highest capacity memory chip now available.
The company said it will fabricate the devices in 51 nanometers (nm), the finest process technology to be used in memory mass production to date. Samsung’s 51nm NAND flash chips can be produced 60 percent more efficiently than those produced with 60nm process technology. The new 16Gb chip, which has a multi-level cell (MLC) structure, can facilitate capacity expansion in a single memory card. The chip’s read and write speeds are approximately 80% faster than current MLC data processing speeds, offering a read speed of 30MB/second and a write speed of 8MB/second.
The new chip will offer specific advantages for devices like high-end music phones and cameras that support high-resolution video capture. Samsung will offer a suite of software and firmware-incorporated storage devices for music phones and MP3 players to support the new NAND chips. Memory cards and MP3 controllers are already available. Demand for 16Gb NAND flash memory is expected to grow rapidly, pushing this new chip into the mainstream market beginning late this year. Aggregate global sales through 2010 are estimated to be US$21 billion.