In recent news reports Hynix Samsung and Toshiba have all announced production of 20-nm class NAND chips with Toshiba reaching as small as 24-nanometer. This new process will allow more chips stacked together for higher capacity NAND flash memory modules. The technology is being applied to 2-bit-per-cell 8GB chips which are purported to be the smallest and highest density memory parts in the world. In the future we can look forward to this process being applied to 3-bit-per-cell 4GB products.

The Toshiba chips use DDR technology for faster data transfer and have applications in devices such as smartphones media players and tablets to name a few. Previously available in the market have been the 8GB NAND chips using 32-nm technology.

This could mean good things for the consumer. Firstly this is liable to incite a price war bringing the cost of this new technology lower than would be expected with only a single manufacturer creating them. Also as large corporations manufacture their newest devices to meet market demand costs for lower capacity NAND flash like USB drives which are still in very high demand could go down. Look for price reductions later this year.

Vilches J. (2010 August 31). Toshiba starts mass production of 24nm NAND flash chip.