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Samsung Begins Production Of 16Gb NAND Flash Memory

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Apr 12, 2001
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Samsung has announced that they are beginning volume production of higher-density flash memory.

Samsung claims to be the first to accomplish the feat of mass-producing 16 gigabit NAND flash memory, which is being manufactured at 51 nm, down from 60 nm with previous 8 gigabit technology.

The new 16Gb chip which has a multi-level cell (MLC) structure can facilitate capacity expansion by offering 16 gigabytes (GBs) of memory in a single memory card. Furthermore, by applying the new process technology, Samsung has accelerated the chip’s read and write speeds by approximately 80 percent over current MLC data processing speeds.
Click to expand...

Apple currently uses flash memory in many of its products, including the iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, and the upcoming iPhone. Rumors have been circulating that Apple will adopt Intel's flash caching technology (featured in the Santa Rosa platform) in its future MacBook lineups. Some analysts have even gone so far as to claim that Apple may introduce a totally flash-based laptop.
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2007/04/30/samsung-ships-16gb-nand-flash-memory/
M

macsforme

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Mar 16, 2007
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The article mentions both gigabits and gigabytes... which are we referring to, or are we talking capacity vs. access speed?
 
Clive At Five

Clive At Five

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May 26, 2004
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The new 16Gb chip which has a multi-level cell (MLC) structure can facilitate capacity expansion by offering 16 gigabytes (GBs) of memory in a single memory card. Furthermore, by applying the new process technology, Samsung has accelerated the chip’s read and write speeds by approximately 80 percent over current MLC data processing speeds.
Click to expand...

Wow. That's the part that impresses me. 80% speed increase?

Zoom Zoom.

-Clive
 
WildCowboy

WildCowboy

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Jan 20, 2005
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They're talking about the individual memory chips that go into flash devices/cards. Current cards use 8 Gbit chips, and they're moving to a denser 16Gbit chip. They stack up a bunch of these to make flash cards.

For instance, a current 8GB card uses two 4GB stacks of four 8Gbit (1GB) chips. With these new, denser chips, they can fit twice storage as much into the same space.
 
rdowns

rdowns

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Jul 11, 2003
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From the article, emphasis mine.

The new 16Gb chip which has a multi-level cell (MLC) structure can facilitate capacity expansion by offering 16 gigabytes (GBs) of memory in a single memory card. Furthermore, by applying the new process technology, Samsung has accelerated the chip’s read and write speeds by approximately 80 percent over current MLC data processing speeds.
 
M

MacFly123

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Dec 25, 2006
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Size

Yes it is talking about speed, but what about this part?

"can facilitate capacity expansion by offering 16 gigabytes (GBs) of memory in a single memory card."

Is that not saying they will make 16GB cards?
 
WildCowboy

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WildCowboy

WildCowboy

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hatcher002 said:
its 8, 8 gig stacks on a single chip
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It's a matter of semantics/nomenclature, but the chips are currently 8 Gbit, soon to be moving to this new 16 Gbit level. That's the max density currently available. Anything larger than that is simply stacks of chips, not a single chip.
 
jbernie

jbernie

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Nov 25, 2005
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MacFly123 said:
Yes it is talking about speed, but what about this part?

"can facilitate capacity expansion by offering 16 gigabytes (GBs) of memory in a single memory card."

Is that not saying they will make 16GB cards?
Click to expand...

It says they have the potential.... we have the potential to make anything we want, the question is when they can do it at a cost that makes it appealing to the companies to put it in devices.

Given how cheap very large hard drives are these days I wouldn't necessarily expect an all flash laptop etc just yet, maybe they could include flash somehow to increase boot speed or similar. But even on high end models you would be paying crazy $$ for a reasonable amount of space which would be a fraction of what would be offered by other companies for the same price.

There are definately lots of benefit to going to flash, but until all the pros outweight the cost, we won't make that jump.
 
B

bloodycape

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Jun 18, 2005
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I have read and seen pics of Samsung Laptops from Japan/Korea(not sure which show it was), that had one 32gig flash drive(16gb*2chips or so I read) and has been on sale for something like 10 or so months now in Asia. There is also the Sony UX series which use to be 16gb flash and was updated to 32gbs a while back. We can only hope to see that on our MB and MBP(maybe 3*32?).
 
Analog Kid

Analog Kid

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Mar 4, 2003
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Funny, I thought these had been shipping for a while now... So the Nano's have 2 and 4 chips in them?

macsforme said:
The article mentions both gigabits and gigabytes... which are we referring to, or are we talking capacity vs. access speed?
Click to expand...

Little b= bits, big B= bytes.
 
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