Wednesday, November 30th 2022
Chinese YMTC Achieves Mass-production of 232-layer 3D NAND, Beating Kioxia, Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix
YMTC delivered on its roadmaps to achieve a mass-production 232-layer 3D NAND flash memory, beating entrenched players Kioxia, Micron Technology, Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynix, to the production 200+ layer feat. The Chinese memory and NAND flash giant announced this memory back in August 2022 as the YMTC X3-9070, along with its new Xtacking 3.0 architecture—a proprietary method by which the company can reliably stack a large number of NAND flash layers. Micron Technology is ready with a 232-layer 3D NAND flash of its own, although it hasn't hit a production ramp, yet. This is an incredible feat considering that YMTC only got into this business in 2016, compared to the other players that each have over two decades of market presence.
YMTC's ramp to 232-layer closely follows its unexpected 2020 feat of a production-grade 128-layer 3D NAND, which was groundbreaking enough to win a supply contract with Apple, before losing it in October 2022, due to political reasons (not technological reasons). The Xtacking 3.0 architecture involves back side source connect (BSSC) for the memory cell wafer, which leads to simpler process and lower cost compared to Xtacking 2.0 (up to 128-layers, which had introduced nickel silicide (NiSi) instead of tungsten silicide (WSi) for better device performance and I/O speed for CMOS wafer. The original Xtacking architecture from YMTC, which it debuted back in 2016, with layer counts going up to 64-layer, relied on cost-effective wafer-to-wafer bonding. The YMTC 232-layer 3D NAND flash should find plenty of takers in the consumer electronics industry, spanning smartphones, consumer storage devices, TVs, and other appliances. The high layer-count has a direct impact on density, which can help designers lower costs by using fewer chips, or increase capacity.
Source:
Tech Insights
YMTC's ramp to 232-layer closely follows its unexpected 2020 feat of a production-grade 128-layer 3D NAND, which was groundbreaking enough to win a supply contract with Apple, before losing it in October 2022, due to political reasons (not technological reasons). The Xtacking 3.0 architecture involves back side source connect (BSSC) for the memory cell wafer, which leads to simpler process and lower cost compared to Xtacking 2.0 (up to 128-layers, which had introduced nickel silicide (NiSi) instead of tungsten silicide (WSi) for better device performance and I/O speed for CMOS wafer. The original Xtacking architecture from YMTC, which it debuted back in 2016, with layer counts going up to 64-layer, relied on cost-effective wafer-to-wafer bonding. The YMTC 232-layer 3D NAND flash should find plenty of takers in the consumer electronics industry, spanning smartphones, consumer storage devices, TVs, and other appliances. The high layer-count has a direct impact on density, which can help designers lower costs by using fewer chips, or increase capacity.
25 Comments on Chinese YMTC Achieves Mass-production of 232-layer 3D NAND, Beating Kioxia, Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix
I know it's possible it can all be original design too but then again.
Sounds like some engineers switched jobs when that was announced.
With all that density available per chip, hiding something in them would be all too easy to do.
It's about NAND memory, that said: TBW rate must be terrible, the true SSD is and will always be SLC and 2D if you like it, not a burger cell pattern. If the consumer market wasn't so moved by trends and obsessed with making everything smaller we could have 3.5", even 5.25" SLC drives that would outlast every other component in a computer, including the PSU. The problem with SLC is physical space, the amount of chips you can put in a single PCB, well, make the PCB bigger then.
Even chimps probably have a few educated individuals who finally realized poo stinks, and sat out the wars. But the majority of our ancestors aren't that far from what we are doing here, just graduated from using actual feces to words or weapons (usually, sometimes feces adds dramatic effect, apparently).
This is NOT a Chinese pronouncement
a Canadian semiconductor and microelectronics intelligence provider, did the investigation and found that YMTC has introduced “the first 200+ layer 3D NAND Flash available on the market”,110% stolen?
So lets see your evidence
As for making everything smaller. One can buy a SSD with lots of TBW in a giant E1.L package intended for storage servers - and yet, it's TLC. 4 TB capacity, and I have no doubt it can actually reach the stated 4.6 PBW and more.
Are there reasons to worry because bits are packed too tightly? Maybe but ... I remember reading an article that stated basically this: people wouldn't trust their data to hard disks if they understood hot densely packed the bits are on them. It takes complex signal processing to read out individual bits from the mess of magnetic fields on the platters. Well, that must have been some two decades ago ... we trusted our data to HDDs before that, and after that, and the bits don't just disappear (but any drive may fail, obviously).
Especially when you contrast the shambles that China's other high-technology industries (microprocessor and lithography) are in. Whey aren't they able to make the same massive leaps forward that YTMC is apaprently capable of doing? Can you explain that to me, @caroline! ? I'm waiting.
That's what's hard to accept here. It simply does not seem plausible. I think extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs... so the burden of proof that it is "homegrown" honestly lies with China here.
Those that use it often understand the Chinese culture the least. What we have from the Chinese culture is impressively fast iteration of non-original ideas. And re-imagining, recycling of ideas. The servers that come out of Inspur and wiwynn are nothing short of remarkable. And the western world could have such awesome servers if companies were willing to cross license to each other more freely. It is easy to recognize in an Inspur server the bits that came from Dell, Cray, IBM, but the mashup is a masterpiece. It is also important to realize that culturally this is not IP theft, because it is iteration and improvement of design.
How can they advance past western designs? Quite easily. Any company that operates in China must form a JV (joint venture) with a member of the CCP on staff directly funneling information to the CCP.
The CCP then take this information and gives it to other Chinese companies to accelerate them as they see fit. It isn't rocket science, it isn't really even shrouded as some great mystery, it is simply the only way companies are allowed to exist if they want access to the Chinese market.
I for one really enjoy seeing all of the x99 motherboards on Aliexpress with recycled chipsets from 1155 boards, the reverse engineering is incredibly impressive.
:roll:very true
Stop the geo-political BS.
Thank You.