Samsung Producing Fifth-Generation V-NAND Memory Chips

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. begun mass producing its fifth-generation V-NAND memory chips with the fast data transfers.

In the industry’s first use of the ‘Toggle DDR 4.0‘ interface, the speed for transmitting data between storage and memory over the company’s 256Gb V-NAND has reached 1.4Gb/s, a 40% increase from its 64-layer predecessor.

The energy efficiency of the company’s V-NAND remains comparable to that of the 64-layer chip, primarily because the operating voltage has been reduced from 1.8V to 1.2V. The V-NAND also has the fastest data write speed to date at 500μs, which represents about a 30% improvement over the write speed of the previous generation, while the response time to read-signals has been reduced to 50μs.

Packed inside the company’s fifth-generation V-NAND are more than 90 layers of ‘3D charge trap flash (CTF) cells,’ the largest amount in the industry, stacked in a pyramid structure with microscopic channel holes vertically drilled throughout. These channel holes, which are only a few hundred-nanometers (nm)-wide, contain more than 85 billion CTF cells that can store three bits of data each. This memory fabrication is the result of several breakthroughs that include advanced circuit designs and new process technologies.

Thanks to enhancements in the V-NAND’s atomic layer deposition process, manufacturing productivity has also increased by more than 30%. The cutting-edge technique allows the height of each cell layer to be reduced by 20%, prevents crosstalk between cells and increases the efficiency of the chip’s data processing.

“Samsung’s fifth-generation V-NAND products and solutions will deliver the most advanced NAND in the rapidly growing premium memory market,” said Kye Hyun Kyung, EVP, flash product and technology, Samsung Electronics. “In addition to the advances we are announcing today, we are preparing to introduce 1Tb and quad-level cell (QLC) offerings to our V-NAND lineup that will continue to drive momentum for next-generation NAND memory solutions throughout the global market.“

The company will be quickly ramping up production of its fifth-generation V-NAND to meet a range of market needs, as it continues to lead the high-density memory movement across critical sectors such as supercomputing, enterprise servers and the latest mobile applications such as premium smartphones.