Samsung to unveil 3D NAND chips

By Kim Yoo-chul

Samsung Electronics has expanded investment in advanced flash memory chips to respond to growing demand for data-intensive devices such as smartphones and to solidify its leadership in the promising market.

Samsung, the world’s top supplier of memory chips, plans to allocate more resources and release its first three-dimensional (3D) NAND chips later this year, six months earlier than initially scheduled.

To that end, the company is scheduled to ship samples to clients in the coming months before producing the new chips at its China plant from next year.

``We have been consistent in developing 3D NAND manufacturing technology," said a Samsung official, Friday.

Samsung plans to ship samples to clients this year and the advanced technology will be applied to its flash chip-making plant in Xi’an, China, which will go online from next year.

Global leading chip manufacturers, such as IBM and Toshiba, are currently struggling to develop 3D NAND chips, widely regarded as next-generation chips.

NAND flash memory is a type of non-volatile storage technology that does not require power to retain data. 3D NAND flash stacks memory cells on top of each other.

Unlike conventional flash chips, chips with 3D technology have the advantage of saving costs and to guarantee densities. The concept is simple _ rather than laying the cells flat on the surface, higher densities can be achieved by stacking them on top of each other.

High industry concentration and increasing barriers to entry, combined with escalating technological uncertainty and reduced demand elasticity, gives way to a new paradigm that no longer rewards aggressive investment for flash memory chip suppliers.

As the global memory chip industry is now left with a handful of major suppliers now that the aggressive “cash-burning” is over, the market leader Samsung is pushing ahead for 3D NAND manufacturing technology, according to Samsung.

The industry restructuring comes after chipmakers are facing technology limitation below 10-nanometer level processing. In chip-making, thinner is better.

This means chips with 20-nanometer processing are better than those with 30-nanometer level in terms of costs and energy consumption.

Samsung officials have confirmed 3D NAND chips will become the industry’s mainstream in the next two or three years. That also means consumers can purchase smartphones, tablets and other digital devices with huge data storage but also with better pricing.

But still, there are some technological problems that should be solved before mass production goes into effect.

``3D NAND manufacturing will be necessary. But it is complex and may use different tool sets. It is believed that planar NAND cannot scale below 10-nanometer and hence 3D NAND will be key to continuing cost declines beyond 10-nanometer. However, complexity is high and may use different tool-sets,’’ said Mark Newman, senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in Hong Kong.

``The main issue is that conventional etching systems deal with aspect ratios of 3:1 to 4:1, while 3D etching requires an aspect ratio of 20:1 or more,’’ he added.

Samsung agreed. ``That’s why we are planning to apply the 3D NAND chip-making architecture in our new plants. Samsung is collaborating with the Netherlands-based ASML to develop the needed equipment for use in 3D NAND chips,’’ said an official at one of Samsung’s chip factories in Korea.