• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

Kioxia and Western Digital Announce 218-layer 3D Flash Memory

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 9, 2007
Messages
47,233 (7.55/day)
Location
Hyderabad, India
System Name RBMK-1000
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
Motherboard ASUS ROG Strix B450-E Gaming
Cooling DeepCool Gammax L240 V2
Memory 2x 8GB G.Skill Sniper X
Video Card(s) Palit GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER GameRock
Storage Western Digital Black NVMe 512GB
Display(s) BenQ 1440p 60 Hz 27-inch
Case Corsair Carbide 100R
Audio Device(s) ASUS SupremeFX S1220A
Power Supply Cooler Master MWE Gold 650W
Mouse ASUS ROG Strix Impact
Keyboard Gamdias Hermes E2
Software Windows 11 Pro
Demonstrating continued innovation, Kioxia Corporation and Western Digital Corp. today announced details of their newest 3D flash memory technology. Applying advanced scaling and wafer bonding technologies, the 3D flash memory delivers exceptional capacity, performance and reliability at a compelling cost, which makes it ideal for meeting the needs of exponential data growth across a broad range of market segments.

"The new 3D flash memory demonstrates the benefits of our strong partnership with Kioxia and our combined innovation leadership," said Alper Ilkbahar, Senior Vice President of Technology & Strategy at Western Digital. "By working with one common R&D roadmap and continued investment in R&D, we have been able to productize this fundamental technology ahead of schedule and deliver high-performance, capital-efficient solutions."



Kioxia and Western Digital reduced the cost by introducing several unique processes and architectures, enabling continued lateral scaling advancements. This balance between vertical and lateral scaling produces greater capacity in a smaller die with fewer layers at an optimized cost. The companies also developed groundbreaking CBA (CMOS directly Bonded to Array) technology, wherein each CMOS wafer and cell array wafer are manufactured separately in its optimized condition and then bonded together to deliver enhanced bit density and fast NAND I/O speed.

"Through our unique engineering partnership, we have successfully launched the eighth-generation BiCS FLASH with the industry's highest bit density," said Masaki Momodomi, Chief Technology Officer at Kioxia Corporation. "I am pleased that Kioxia's sample shipments for limited customers have started. By applying CBA technology and scaling innovations, we've advanced our portfolio of 3D flash memory technologies for use in a range of data-centric applications including smartphones, IoT devices and data centers."

The 218-layer 3D flash leverages 1 Tb triple-level-cell (TLC) and quad-level-cell (QLC) with four planes and features innovative lateral shrink technology to increase bit density by over 50 percent. Its high-speed NAND I/O at over 3.2 Gb/s, a 60 percent improvement over the previous generation, combined with a 20 percent write performance and read latency improvement, will accelerate overall performance and usability for users.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site
 
Joined
Feb 1, 2019
Messages
3,590 (1.69/day)
Location
UK, Midlands
System Name Main PC
Processor 13700k
Motherboard Asrock Z690 Steel Legend D4 - Bios 13.02
Cooling Noctua NH-D15S
Memory 32 Gig 3200CL14
Video Card(s) 4080 RTX SUPER FE 16G
Storage 1TB 980 PRO, 2TB SN850X, 2TB DC P4600, 1TB 860 EVO, 2x 3TB WD Red, 2x 4TB WD Red
Display(s) LG 27GL850
Case Fractal Define R4
Audio Device(s) Soundblaster AE-9
Power Supply Antec HCG 750 Gold
Software Windows 10 21H2 LTSC
No mention of durability though, as that bit density increase I expect would hit that.
 
Joined
May 11, 2018
Messages
1,254 (0.52/day)
I bet this will be put to good use in 1TB and 2TB drives with better profit margins. And users who want cheaper 4TB and 8TB drives will be left looking at the ageing SATA drives with blazing 80 MB/s sustained speed (Samsung SSD 870 QVO)...
 
Joined
Apr 22, 2021
Messages
249 (0.19/day)
None of these specs matters if this thing idles crazy and tips throttling in no time and by WD, and team, not mentioning this thing thermals, expect the worst.
 
Joined
Jul 5, 2013
Messages
27,752 (6.67/day)
No mention of durability though, as that bit density increase I expect would hit that.
No, it wouldn't. Adding layers does not hurt durability. Adding bit's per cell does. The TLC VS QLC durability specs will remain the same.

None of these specs matters if this thing idles crazy and tips throttling in no time and by WD, and team, not mentioning this thing thermals, expect the worst.
What are you talking about?
 
Joined
Feb 1, 2019
Messages
3,590 (1.69/day)
Location
UK, Midlands
System Name Main PC
Processor 13700k
Motherboard Asrock Z690 Steel Legend D4 - Bios 13.02
Cooling Noctua NH-D15S
Memory 32 Gig 3200CL14
Video Card(s) 4080 RTX SUPER FE 16G
Storage 1TB 980 PRO, 2TB SN850X, 2TB DC P4600, 1TB 860 EVO, 2x 3TB WD Red, 2x 4TB WD Red
Display(s) LG 27GL850
Case Fractal Define R4
Audio Device(s) Soundblaster AE-9
Power Supply Antec HCG 750 Gold
Software Windows 10 21H2 LTSC
No, it wouldn't. Adding layers does not hurt durability. Adding bit's per cell does. The TLC VS QLC durability specs will remain the same.


What are you talking about?
They didnt just add layers, the node size has also been shrank.
 
Top