Here’s something which could be really huge for the smartphones in the years to come. Samsung has officially confirmed that they have started mass-production of Vertical 3D NAND Flash storage chips.
While smartphones are literally replacing a lot of other devices like camera, iPod and such, the need for storing data has been increasing day by day. And with devices which has some really good camera, people store a lot of pictures which consume major portion of their storage. If you are one of them, and if you are worried about the storage space, then I think it’s time to start being happy.
Samsung has officially confirmed that they have started off with the mass-production of 3D NAND chips, which would ultimately lead to over 384GB of data storage capacity in smartphones. The new technology stacks up to 24 layers of 16GB storage capacity on top of each other, but with the same thickness of the current NAND chips, which are currently available in the market.
This is a huge step forward for the smartphone manufacturers, since the worry for changing the design of their devices’ logic board will no longer be there. Considering the size of the new 3D Layered chips, the manufacturers would have to just deploy the new chips from Samsung.
Samsung has also revealed that they have been working on this technology for about 10 years now, and the company has 300 patent applications pending to save their innovation.
Here’s a quote from Samsung’s official press release:
Also, one of the most important technological achievements of the new Samsung V-NAND is that the company’s proprietary vertical interconnect process technology can stack as many as 24 cell layers vertically, using special etching technology that connects the layers electronically by punching holes from the highest layer to the bottom. With the new vertical structure, Samsung can enable higher density NAND flash memory products by increasing the 3D cell layers without having to continue planar scaling, which has become incredibly difficult to achieve.
Now that the chips have entered mass-production, the next question would be about the increase in the cost. At this point of time, we will have to just wait until some company would come out with smartphones and tablets with the new 3D NAND chips in them.