Samsung Electronics announced Monday that it had begun mass production of the 1-terabit eighth-generation Vertical NAND (V-NAND), the world’s fastest and most capacious chip.

Back in 2013, Samsung developed a 24-layer NAND chip in which the cells — that is, the storage spaces — were stacked vertically for the first time in the world. Technological evolution since then has led to mass production of the eighth generation of NAND, which now has over 200 layers.

Stacking up cells in a limited space has increased the chip’s storage capacity and its processing speed as well.

“Based on the Toggle DDR 5.0 interface — the latest NAND flash standard — Samsung’s eighth-generation V-NAND features an input and output (I/O) speed of up to 2.4 gigabits per second (Gbps), a 1.2X boost over the previous generation,” Samsung said.

V-NAND also features triple level cell (TLC) technology. That allows each cell to hold three bits of information, giving the chip “the industry’s highest bit density,” Samsung explained.

According to market research firm Omdia, the NAND market underwent remarkable growth between 2016 and 2021, increasing from US$36.8 billion to US$68.4 billion. That growth was driven by the mass adoption of smartphones and the expansion of data centers, among other factors.

One advantage of NAND chips is that they retain data even when the device is shut down. They’re also very small, which has led to their widespread adoption in smartphone memory, flash drives, and solid-state drives.

As of the second quarter of the year, Samsung Electronics was the biggest player in the NAND market, with a 33.3% share. The next two biggest companies were Korea’s SK Hynix (including Solidigm) and Japan’s Kioxia, with shares of 20.4% and 16.0%, respectively.

The demand for NAND memory is expected to keep growing now that automakers have begun installing high-performance memory chips in vehicles.

“Servers, mobile devices, and vehicle electronics will be the three biggest areas of demand for NAND memory after 2030,” Samsung Electronics predicted.

Chipmakers are competing more fiercely than ever to add more layers to their NAND memory.

American company Micron Technology said in July that it has begun producing 232-layer NAND memory. In August, SK Hynix announced that it had developed a 238-layer NAND, with mass production slated to begin in the first half of 2023.

Now that its eighth generation of V-NAND is in production, Samsung Electronics plans to begin mass production of the ninth generation in 2024. It also has the goal of developing V-NAND memory with more than a thousand layers by 2030 — which would represent a fivefold increase from the seventh generation’s count of 176 layers.

“Our eighth-generation V-NAND will help meet rapidly growing market demand and better position us to deliver more differentiated products and solutions,” said SungHoi Hur, Samsung’s executive vice president of flash products and technology.

By Lee Jeong-hun, staff reporter

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