Samsung introduces V-NAND flash ICs and SSDs

Samsung has introduced V-NAND (Vertical NAND) 3D flash memory with a 128-Gbit device. The devise is fabricated using an innovative vertical interconnect process technology to link the 24-layer 3D cell array. The device is based on Charge Trap Flash (CTF) structure with 30-nm feature size and cells that are rotated to a vehicle orientation. In this method, the electric charge is temporarily placed in a holding chamber of the nonconductive layer of flash that is composed of silicon nitride (SiN), instead of using a floating gate.

The larger feature size reduces cell-to-cell interference and Samsung intends to stay with this dimension and build very-high-density memory using 3D stacking with 24 or more cell layers. Samsung claims the new chips offer two to ten times endurance and at least twice the write speed of multi-level-cell (MLC) planar NAND flash memory while consuming half the power. The chips provide 35,000 program erase cycles.

While samples of the new device are said to be in the hands of key customers, it does not yet have a part number and regular commercial availability could not be pinned down past “sometime in 2014.”

Samsung also introduced SSDs using V-NAND — again with no part numbers yet. The 480- and 960-Gbyte drives are designed for enterprise-class servers, not consumer applications. They are said to yield 20% faster random write speed and 27% lower average power than existing drives. The 960-G drive uses 64 dies of MLC 3D V-NAND. No price information is available, but the drives should be available soon.