Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has announced a second generation of its V-NAND vertically stacked flash memory, this time with 32 layers. The first generation announced in August 2013 had 24 vertically stacked layers to produce a 128Gbit monolithic memory.
Samsung did not indicate the memory capacity of the second-generation V-NAND component, implying the memory capacity could be the same but spread over more layers and therefore allowing a further relaxation of the planar minimum geometry.
However, the increased number of layers appears to have diminished the advantage that V-NAND can demonstrate over planar multi-level-cell (MLC) NAND. In the 24-layer device the endurance was said to be between 2 and 10 times that of equivalent MLC-type planar NAND flash memory. The 24-layer device was said to consume half the power of its 2D equivalent. Solid-state drives based on the 32-layer V-NAND are limited to twice the endurance for writing data and consume only 20 percent less power, compared to planar (2D) MLC NAND-based drives.
Samsung did say that the 32-layer V-NAND requires a higher level of design technology to stack the cell arrays than the previous 24-layer V-NAND, but delivers greater production efficiency.
Samsung has launched a line of SSDs based on the second generation V-NAND with capacities of 128Gbyte, 256Gbyte, 512Gbyte and 1Tbyte. Later this year, Samsung will introduce additional premium 3D-based SSDs based on this 2nd generation V-NAND memory with higher reliability and density, Samsung said.
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