Toshiba samples 16Gbit multilevel flash
Toshiba says it has developed the technology to support the manufacture of 16Gbit multilevel cell NAND flash memories on a 43nm process, which has been developed in conjunction with SanDisk.
Presenting a paper on the development at ISSCC, Toshiba said the 16Gbit products have a chip area of approximately 120mm² – less than 70% of the silicon area needed by the 16Gbit NAND flash memories developed by Toshiba and SanDisk and made on a 56nm process.
The new devices feature memory cells grouped and controlled in NAND strings of 64 cells aligned in parallel, with a dummy word line cell at either end to prevent program disturbance. This is said to reduce the number of select gates and to improve memory area efficiency.
Toshiba is sampling the 16Gbit devices immediately and plans to start production in March. It will then move to production of 32Gbit NAND flash in Q3 2008.
