Intel and Micron took home a little silverware from the Flash Memory Summit this year. The duo won the award for Most Innovative Flash Memory Technology for the companies’ 20nm NAND flash memory process technology. The 20nm 8GB NAND chip from Intel and Micron delivers the highest capacity in the smallest form factor.
Intel and Micron took home a little silverware from the Flash Memory Summit this year. The duo won the award for Most Innovative Flash Memory Technology for the companies’ 20nm NAND flash memory process technology. The 20nm 8GB NAND chip from Intel and Micron delivers the highest capacity in the smallest form factor.
The 20nm 8GB chip measures just 118mm and enables a 30 to 40 percent reduction in board space compared to existing 25nm 8GB NAND devices. A reduction in the flash storage layout provides greater system level efficiency and provides more room in devices like tablets and smartphone for things like a larger capacity battery, or additional hardware.
How Much Smaller Can NAND Get?
In the SSD space right now, most tier one drives are shipping with the Intel/Micron 25nm NAND, with the exception of a few drives using Toshiba’s 32nm Toggle NAND. The drive toward 20nm NAND is a logical next step, but the die-shrinking process has its limits. Most indicators show both client and enterprise SSDs migrating to 20nm NAND in 2012, with one more reduction in size to 1Xnm in mid to late 2013. After that, industry leaders like Micron have 3D NAND technologies in the works which opens up tremendous new opportunities in terms of capacity and drive performance.
