SK Hynix Showcases Samples of World's First 321-Layer NAND Flash

[btarunr]

SK hynix Inc. showcased today the sample of the 321-layer 4D NAND, making public the progress on its development of the industry's first NAND with more than 300 layers. The company gave a presentation on the progress on the development of its 321-layer 1 Tb TLC 4D NAND Flash and displayed the samples at the Flash Memory Summit (FMS) 2023 taking place Aug. 8-10 in Santa Clara.

SK hynix is the first in the industry to unveil the progress on the development of a NAND with more than 300 layers in detail. The company plans to raise the level of completion of the 321-layer product and start mass production from the first half of 2025. The company said its technological competitiveness accumulated from the success of the world's highest 238-layer NAND, already in mass production, paved the way for a smooth progress for the development of the 321-layer product. "With another breakthrough to address stacking limitations, SK hynix will open the era of NAND with more than 300 layers and lead the market."



The 321-layer 1 Tb TLC NAND comes with a 59% improvement in productivity, compared with the earlier generation of 238-layer 512Gb, thanks to the technology development that enabled stacking of more cells and larger storage capacity on a single chip, meaning the total capacity that can be produced on a single wafer increased.

Since the introduction of ChatGPT that accelerated the growth of the generative AI market, demand for high-performance and high-capacity memory products that can process more data at a faster pace is growing rapidly.

Accordingly, at the FMS, SK hynix also introduced next-generation NAND solutions optimized for such AI demand, including the enterprise SSD adopting the PCIe Gen 5 interface and UFS 4.0.

The company expects these products to achieve industry-leading performance to fully meet the needs of the customers with a focus on high performance.

SK hynix also announced that it has started development of the next-generation PCIe Gen 6 and UFS 5.0 with the improved technology for solution development that it acquired through these products and expressed its commitment to leading the industry trend.

Jungdal Choi, Head of NAND Development, said during a keynote speech that the company expects the ongoing development of the 321-layer product, the fifth generation of the 4D NAND, to help the company solidify its technological leadership in the NAND space. "With timely introduction of the high-performance and high-capacity NAND, we will strive to meet the requirements of the AI era and continue to lead innovation."

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[Minus Infinity]

Anybody want to take bets on the Random IOPS @ QD1. I'm guessing < 10% uplift over current 232/236 layer NAND.

 

[LabRat 891]

Anybody want to take bets on the Random IOPS @ QD1. I'm guessing < 10% uplift over current 232/236 layer NAND.

Good point, but.
At this time, many consumer/enthusiasts/gamers just want SSDs big enough to fit more than a handful of the latest titles.
Not to mention, various reasons for outright replacing spinning rust in their systems. (It does feel like you're living in the future w/ all NVME SSDs)
Basically we want denser NAND, and this is a step towards that.

TBQH, I want a new cheap-to-produce solid state memory technology to take off. Optane was Flanderized by Intel and didn't live up to its potential.

 

[Minus Infinity]

Good point, but.
At this time, many consumer/enthusiasts/gamers just want SSDs big enough to fit more than a handful of the latest titles.
Not to mention, various reasons for outright replacing spinning rust in their systems. (It does feel like you're living in the future w/ all NVME SSDs)
Basically we want denser NAND, and this is a step towards that.

TBQH, I want a new cheap-to-produce solid state memory technology to take off. Optane was Flanderized by Intel and didn't live up to its potential.

Well if they announce 8TB drives at current 4TB pricing I'll buy one ASAP.

 

[Bwaze]

Well if they announce 8TB drives at current 4TB pricing I'll buy one ASAP.

I fear they will only use this tech to make larger storage for mobile devices, and reduce cost of existing sizes of desktop drives that are dirt cheap right now.

And 8 TB?

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."

 

[Chaitanya]

Well if they announce 8TB drives at current 4TB pricing I'll buy one ASAP.

We can only wish but thats not how sadly industry is working right now.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Is it just me, or is there about a 2 year lag behind some flash industry flash industry roadmaps published? Of course, these road maps are not exactly official, but compiled by some websites following various statements. I remember that somewhere I saw such cards, predicting for the year 2025 around 500 layer NAND flash.

 

[Lesha]

More layers = more heat?

 

[Bwaze]

Is it just me, or is there about a 2 year lag behind some flash industry flash industry roadmaps published? Of course, these road maps are not exactly official, but compiled by some websites following various statements. I remember that somewhere I saw such cards, predicting for the year 2025 around 500 layer NAND flash.

I remember graphs back in the SATA era showing us when will flash overtake HDD in cost per TB. That was before M.2, which threw all such calculations out and even put us backwards for years, as far as capacity and cost per TB goes.


But we gained sleek cable-less look, amazing coolers for SSDs and unbelievable benchmark results. Real world tests like Windows, games and app load times paint a picture noone really wants to see.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I remember graphs back in the SATA era showing us when will flash overtake HDD in cost per TB. That was before M.2, which threw all such calculations out and even put us backwards for years, as far as capacity and cost per TB goes.


But we gained sleek cable-less look, amazing coolers for SSDs and unbelievable benchmark results. Real world tests like Windows, games and app load times paint a picture noone really wants to see.

Like this one you mean? Where SATA drives are 10 seconds slower...

 

[A&P211]

Whats the benefit of more layers?

 

[Minus Infinity]

Whats the benefit of more layers?

The obvious one is higher density in the same footprint = more memory without making the ssd larger.

Stacking also allows shorter connections between memory cells and allows for faster transfer speeds. IIRC I have read about future 500+ layer 3D Nand in maybe 2027/28.

 

[Bwaze]

Like this one you mean? Where SATA drives are 10 seconds slower...

Ah yes, exactly like this one. Except the "10 second slower SATA" is actually a specialy slow QLC drive that measures bad even compared to other SATA drives, and TechPowerUP reviewed with the title "Samsung 870 QVO 1 TB Review - Terrible, Do Not Buy" - and that was comparing it to other SATA drives! (But it's still almost only drive you can buy in 8TB capacity, 3,5 years later, but that's another topic).

There is a SATA drive above it, low budget Samsung 860 EVO, which is almost 5 seconds faster, half way between this SATA example and the fastest PCIe 5.0 NVMe drive!

And let's not forget, after SATA we had NVMe 2.0, which more than doubled read and write speeds. And the PCIe 3.0 doubled the speed of that. And the PCIe 4.0 doubled the speed of that. And, you guessed it, PCIe 5.0 drives doubled the theoretical, and roughly benchmarked sequential speeds and writes of that.


And after all that, with speed increase from 500 MB/s to 12 GB/s we get a whopping 18% faster load times from Samsung 860 EVO to fastest NVMe 5.0?

18%, after 4 generations of doubling the speed?

Even from the "'Don Not Buy" 870 QVO to fastest NVMe 5.0 we only get less than 27% faster time.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Ah yes, exactly like this one. Except the "10 second slower SATA" is actually a specialy slow QLC drive that measures bad even compared to other SATA drives, and TechPowerUP reviewed with the title "Samsung 870 QVO 1 TB Review - Terrible, Do Not Buy" - and that was comparing it to other SATA drives! (But it's still almost only drive you can buy in 8TB capacity, 3,5 years later, but that's another topic).

There is a SATA drive above it, low budget Samsung 860 EVO, which is almost 5 seconds faster, half way between this SATA example and the fastest PCIe 5.0 NVMe drive!

And let's not forget, after SATA we had NVMe 2.0, which more than doubled read and write speeds. And the PCIe 3.0 doubled the speed of that. And the PCIe 4.0 doubled the speed of that. And, you guessed it, PCIe 5.0 drives doubled the theoretical, and roughly benchmarked sequential speeds and writes of that.


And after all that, with speed increase from 500 MB/s to 12 GB/s we get a whopping 18% faster load times from Samsung 860 EVO to fastest NVMe 5.0?

18%, after 4 generations of doubling the speed?

Even from the "'Don Not Buy" 870 QVO to fastest NVMe 5.0 we only get less than 27% faster time.

The BX500 is right above it, but I guess you want to selectively point out the worst SATA drive then?
Yes, NVMe isn't better for everything, but considering there's no price difference any more, I would pick NVMe over SATA any day.
In fact, SATA drives cost more than NVMe drives in many cases, so why would anyone buy SATA over NVMe?
I take it you mean PCIe 2.0? NVMe 2.0 was only announced in 2021 and there's no NVMe 5.0.
You keep buying SATA if that's what you like.

 

[chrcoluk]

I still think SATA is in that "good enough" category for most people, but of course the pricing and the tendency for junk tier nand to go in some of those products affects my decision's, NVME recently has had somewhat of a price crash. I have made a decision now given I have spare SSD's laying around, that I probably wont buy another SATA now unless its 4TB (not QLC) or more or the price is in another world for value. But likewise similar for NVME where I probably wont buy any below 2TB anymore. Given I have 8 vs 3 M.2 slots in this system (5 if I use both spare 4x lane PCIE slots for M.2), and 6 vs an effective 1 in my 2nd rig (cannot use its spare PCIe slot for M.2 as an extra slot as use of that slot disables the M.2 slot, the second M.2 slot is only 2 lanes), its clear my days of buying NVME are almost over unless one fails or I buy one more 2TB or 4TB.

SATA I can see myself buying though as I have 2 4TB spindles in this machine and two 3TB, which could be replaced by SATA SSDs given the right pricing conditions.

Also SATA PCIe cards with 4 SATA ports are dirt cheap and in plentiful supply, getting 4 NVME on a PCIE card the cards are much more expensive so I do think there is a market for both still, and there probably always will be as its so much easier to put SATA ports on a motherboard vs M.2.

 

[Bwaze]

Yes, NVMe isn't better for everything, but considering there's no price difference any more, I would pick NVMe over SATA any day.
In fact, SATA drives cost more than NVMe drives in many cases, so why would anyone buy SATA over NVMe?
...
You keep buying SATA if that's what you like.

I'm not saying SATA drives are better, or make more sense (unless of course you run out of M.2 slots and don't need fastest drive), I'm jusy saying how far appart is user experience from the marketing and benchmarks of sequential speeds with NVMe 5.0 (yes, I mixed and confused NVMe with PCIe above) SSDs now.

Imagine we had such disparity with GPUs? Four generations of 100% speed increases in theoretical speed and 3DMark results, but in the end only 18% faster FPS in games? I say people would think twice before upgrading. It's even worse, since game and app loading times only represent a small portion of use.

And that's exactly what's going on with SSD market - sales are still abysmal, even though the prices have halved in the last year. Because almost noone needs to upgrade - they offer the same capacities as last 5 years, and speed apparently doesn't matter since the bottlenecks are elsewhere. We have been hearing about how we need latest NVMe drives to use DirectStorage for years now, but the closer it is, the less enthusiastic developers seem to be.

 

[chrcoluk]

I'm not saying SATA drives are better, or make more sense (unless of course you run out of M.2 slots and don't need fastest drive), I'm jusy saying how far appart is user experience from the marketing and benchmarks of sequential speeds with NVMe 5.0 (yes, I mixed and confused NVMe with PCIe above) SSDs now.

Imagine we had such disparity with GPUs? Four generations of 100% speed increases in theoretical speed and 3DMark results, but in the end only 18% faster FPS in games? I say people would think twice before upgrading. It's even worse, since game and app loading times only represent a small portion of use.

And that's exactly what's going on with SSD market - sales are still abysmal, even though the prices have halved in the last year. Because almost noone needs to upgrade - they offer the same capacities as last 5 years, and speed apparently doesn't matter since the bottlenecks are elsewhere. We have been hearing about how we need latest NVMe drives to use DirectStorage for years now, but the closer it is, the less enthusiastic developers seem to be.

Feels like the "speed" market has hit saturation hence the price crashes, and for whatever reason the manufacturers are just refusing to budge on capacity, they do not want to cut their margins by adding more chips.

DS on ratchet also needing only gen 3 as well, so all that nonsense about gen 5 being needed for DS hasnt worked for them either.