By Baek Byung-yeul
SK Hynix announced Monday that it has successfully developed a 176-layer semiconductor further heating up the competition among NAND flash chip manufacturers.
The company said it has successfully developed 176-layer, 512 gigabyte, triple-level cell (TLC) 4D NAND flash chips, which have a much improved data transfer speed. It already provided product samples to manufacturers who will commence development procedures to produce various flash memory devices such as solid-state drives (SSDs) and SD cards with the new technology.
Since its 96-layer NAND flash products the company has applied its own four-dimensional (4D) technology to develop new chips. Compared to chips based on 3D technology, semiconductors using 4D NAND technology have a higher density and are more efficient.
The 176-layer NAND flash chips will be used for mobile devices starting next year, and use in SSDs for both enterprises and consumers will follow, the company said.
SK hynix said the new 176-layer NAND flash is its third-generation 4D product that secures the industry's best number of chips per wafer. "This allows the bit productivity to be improved by 35 percent compared to the previous generation, with differentiated cost competitiveness," the company said.
The memory chip maker added the new chip boasts faster data read and transfer speeds.
"The read speed of cells increased by 20 percent over the previous generation adopting 2-division cell array selection technology. The data transfer speed also has been improved by 33 percent to 1.6 gigabits per second adopting acceleration technology without increasing the number of processes," SK hynix said.
The NAND flash industry has seen growing competition as U.S. NAND chip maker Micron Technology announced the development of a 176-layer NAND flash chip last month. Stacking up as many thin layers as possible has become a top priority for the NAND flash industry because more layers means increased storage capacity.
"NAND flash companies are striving to improve technologies for higher integration and maximum productivity at the same time," Choi, Jung-dal, head of NAND Development at SK hynix, said. "SK hynix, as a pioneer of 4D NAND, will lead the NAND flash market with the industry's highest productivity and technology."
The NAND flash memory chip market has shown steady growth because more IT devices have increasingly adopted the finger nail-sized chips that can retain huge amounts of data.
According to data by market researcher Omdia, the NAND flash market in 2020 is estimated to be 431.8 billion gigabytes and is expected to grow to 1.366 trillion gigabytes in 2024 with an annual growth rate of 33.4 percent.
SK hynix has been working on improving its dominance in the NAND market. In October, the company signed a deal to buy U.S. chip giant Intel's NAND business for $9 billion. This was the largest overseas acquisition deal ever inked by a Korean company, surpassing Samsung Electronics' $8 billion acquisition of Harman back in 2016.
With the acquisition, SK hynix will have the second-largest market share in the NAND business after Samsung. According to Omdia, Intel held the fourth-largest market share of 11.5 percent in the NAND sector in the second quarter while SK hynix was the fifth with 11.4 percent.
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| SK hynix's 176-layer NAND flash chips / Courtesy of SK hynix |
The company said it has successfully developed 176-layer, 512 gigabyte, triple-level cell (TLC) 4D NAND flash chips, which have a much improved data transfer speed. It already provided product samples to manufacturers who will commence development procedures to produce various flash memory devices such as solid-state drives (SSDs) and SD cards with the new technology.
Since its 96-layer NAND flash products the company has applied its own four-dimensional (4D) technology to develop new chips. Compared to chips based on 3D technology, semiconductors using 4D NAND technology have a higher density and are more efficient.
The 176-layer NAND flash chips will be used for mobile devices starting next year, and use in SSDs for both enterprises and consumers will follow, the company said.
SK hynix said the new 176-layer NAND flash is its third-generation 4D product that secures the industry's best number of chips per wafer. "This allows the bit productivity to be improved by 35 percent compared to the previous generation, with differentiated cost competitiveness," the company said.
The memory chip maker added the new chip boasts faster data read and transfer speeds.
"The read speed of cells increased by 20 percent over the previous generation adopting 2-division cell array selection technology. The data transfer speed also has been improved by 33 percent to 1.6 gigabits per second adopting acceleration technology without increasing the number of processes," SK hynix said.
The NAND flash industry has seen growing competition as U.S. NAND chip maker Micron Technology announced the development of a 176-layer NAND flash chip last month. Stacking up as many thin layers as possible has become a top priority for the NAND flash industry because more layers means increased storage capacity.
"NAND flash companies are striving to improve technologies for higher integration and maximum productivity at the same time," Choi, Jung-dal, head of NAND Development at SK hynix, said. "SK hynix, as a pioneer of 4D NAND, will lead the NAND flash market with the industry's highest productivity and technology."
The NAND flash memory chip market has shown steady growth because more IT devices have increasingly adopted the finger nail-sized chips that can retain huge amounts of data.
According to data by market researcher Omdia, the NAND flash market in 2020 is estimated to be 431.8 billion gigabytes and is expected to grow to 1.366 trillion gigabytes in 2024 with an annual growth rate of 33.4 percent.
SK hynix has been working on improving its dominance in the NAND market. In October, the company signed a deal to buy U.S. chip giant Intel's NAND business for $9 billion. This was the largest overseas acquisition deal ever inked by a Korean company, surpassing Samsung Electronics' $8 billion acquisition of Harman back in 2016.
With the acquisition, SK hynix will have the second-largest market share in the NAND business after Samsung. According to Omdia, Intel held the fourth-largest market share of 11.5 percent in the NAND sector in the second quarter while SK hynix was the fifth with 11.4 percent.
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