Samsung Said to Produce 300-Layer V-NAND in 2024

[TheLostSwede]

It appears that Samsung is getting ready to beat SK Hynix in the race to 300 plus layers of NAND Flash, at least according to reports coming out of South Korea. The Seoul Economic Daily claims in an exclusive that Samsung will have a 300 plus layer V-NAND—(V for Vertical or 3D NAND—chip ready for production in 2024 and could as such beat SK Hynix by as much as a year, depending on how soon Samsung can deliver. Currently Samsung's most cutting edge stacked NAND is a 236-layer product, which is four more layers than Micron and YMTC, but two less than SK Hynix.

What sticks out in the Seoul Economic Daily news piece is that unlike SK Hynix, which is going for a triple stack sandwich, Samsung will apparently stick with two stacks. This means that Samsung is aiming for over 150-layers of NAND per stack, which seems like a big risk to take when it comes to yields. The taller the stacks, the bigger the chance of a failed stack, but maybe Samsung has found a solution around this potential issue. As modern 3D NAND relies on Through Silicon Vias, it's easier to manufacture denser stacks than in the past when wire bonding was used, but even so, this seems like a big risk for Samsung to take. That said, considering the current low demand and news of further cutbacks in production, it might be a good time for Samsung to utilise its fabs to test out this new, more densely stacked NAND to see if the company can mass produce it without issues. Samsung's roadmap calls for a 1000 plus layer V-NAND product by 2030, but it seems like the road there is still long and complicated.



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[vbq7qK68eyYAH4iR]

Is there any word on if this will be TLC, QLC or both technologies?

 

[TheLostSwede]

Is there any word on if this will be TLC, QLC or both technologies?

No, but most likely both.

 

[Chaitanya]

No, but most likely both.

Also they have stopped mentioning no of bits/cell these and not sure if their high end enterprise drives also come with MLC anymore or MLC have died out.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Also they have stopped mentioning no of bits/cell these and not sure if their high end enterprise drives also come with MLC anymore or MLC have died out.

MLC is mostly dead, as it was planar NAND.
Even what is touted as SLC today is usually pSLC, i.e. 3D TLC that only stores one bit per cell.

 

[chrcoluk]

Also they have stopped mentioning no of bits/cell these and not sure if their high end enterprise drives also come with MLC anymore or MLC have died out.

TLC seems to have good enough endurance now and can manage the performance, the 970 PRO was 3D MLC, but the 980 PRO 3D TLC has almost as fast sustained writes when not using pSLC, and faster when using pSLC.

I think modern 3D TLC is as endurant and fast as planar MLC which is now really dated.

 

[TheLostSwede]

TLC seems to have good enough endurance now and can manage the performance, the 970 PRO was 3D MLC, but the 980 PRO 3D TLC has almost as fast sustained writes when not using pSLC, and faster when using pSLC.

I think modern 3D TLC is as endurant and fast as planar MLC which is now really dated.

It would be interesting to see a top of the range MLC drive from back in the day being tested against a top of the range current 3D TLC drive.
Looks like Micron does some 3D MLC, but 64 GB costs $42...

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Micron/MT29F512G08CMCEBJ4-37ITRE?qs=w%2Fv1CP2dgqoyUyXs8N872w%3D%3D

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Let's resuming.

Samsung 300+ layers
Hynix 321 layers
Kioxia 330 layers
WD 360 layers
All numbers is fake and create from me.

 

[FeelinFroggy]

Curious to know what the additional layers provide? Obviously I'm not an expert, but do additional layers improve life expectancy or reliability? Or is it faster speeds or more storage?

 

[TumbleGeorge]

At least some of the companies will include and simultaneously access more information layers, which will lead to the acceleration of reading small files, an achievement that we are so disappointed at the moment compared to the capabilities of Intel Optane.

Curious to know what the additional layers provide? Obviously I'm not an expert, but do additional layers improve life expectancy or reliability? Or is it faster speeds or more storage?

 

[qlum]

technically tlc/qlc nand can be used as mlc or even slc, after all dynamic cache like that is a thing. This is dependand on the controller to make it happen. It just for most uses is not worth the capacity tradeoff to go permanently lower than tlc.

 

[Assimilator]

Didn't realise SKH's 321-layer stuff was only coming in 2025, yikes.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Didn't realise SKH's 321-layer stuff was only coming in 2025, yikes.

In article Micron is mentioned but their mass production of 300+ layers nand propably will start before Samsung?

 

[kilis]

Any hope to see reasonably priced 10 terabyte drives in near future to replace my 2x10 TB 7200 rpm buzzing and vibrating hard drives ?
I really don't mind the latest gen in terms of speed.. Even the pci-express 3.0 m2 ssd speed more than enough for my archiving purposes.

 

[kondamin]

Wish they stopped putting so much effort on this dead end

 

[R-T-B]

Wish they stopped putting so much effort on this dead end

What's dead end about 3D flash? Short of 3d xpoint which wasn't commercially viable, its the best we got.

 

[mechtech]

I want # of layers to be a prime number

 

[Wirko]

I want # of layers to be a prime number

I want a drive with e bits per cell.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

I want # of layers to be a prime number

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Architectural-scheme-of-a-two-layer-3D-stacked-NAND-Flash-MAT1-and-MAT2-represent-the_fig3_319047767

 

[kondamin]

What's dead end about 3D flash? Short of 3d xpoint which wasn't commercially viable, its the best we got.

it's becoming more fragile every node shrink, having 4TB drives of which you can't use 3TB or it stops working after half a year isn't exactly to appealing a prospect.

 

[chrcoluk]

it's becoming more fragile every node shrink, having 4TB drives of which you can't use 3TB or it stops working after half a year isn't exactly to appealing a prospect.

Ironically node shrink problems is what caused the birth of 3D nand, if they have gone back to node shrinking maybe thats why Samsung have started releasing problematic drives again.

 

[Denver]

If there's one thing Samsung did exceptionally well besides oled screens, it's nand. But it seems like the competition is a lot tougher lately, hopefully something good will come out of it.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

I want a drive with e bits per cell.

I want i bits per cell

 

[R-T-B]

it's becoming more fragile every node shrink

good thing layers are ensuring we arne't doing node shrinks anymore.

Ironically node shrink problems is what caused the birth of 3D nand, if they have gone back to node shrinking maybe thats why Samsung have started releasing problematic drives again.

I believe they at worst, just aren't shrinking anymore from past releases. For a while node size was actually INCREASING due to the mirracle of 3d nand.

 

[Six_Times]

What's dead end about 3D flash? Short of 3d xpoint which wasn't commercially viable, its the best we got.

True.

It's a shame the best never became successful. I know its only a guess, but, I do think had Intel held on and produced one more generation, and other companies licensed the tech from Intel, we would have the next generation xpoint today. Can you imagine how fast it would be now? It was stable, extremely high reliability, and fastest made to date. Granted price was high, but so was nand.