Toshiba announces new "3D" NAND flash technology

It looks like Samsung's not the only one trying to build a better NAND flash chip, with Toshiba now joining the fray today with news that it's made some advancements of its own. Much like Samsung, Toshiba's apparently managed to cram more storage into roughly the same size chips by changing the way the various elements are stacked, in this case busting things out into three dimensions. According to Toshiba, the so-called "pillars" of stacked memory elements can be squeezed into a tighter space thanks in part to some shared peripheral circuits, although that apparently comes at the expense of a longer and more complex manufacturing process. What's not clear, however, is exactly how big an increase that'll translate to in terms of bits and bytes, nor is there any indication as to when we might actually see some NAND units based on the technology.

[Via TG Daily]

[ZRX @ Jun 12th 2007 10:14PM]

Wasn't some sort of 3D flash memory in development a few years ago but was supposed to be "burn once" and super cheap ?

[ThOneandonly @ Jun 12th 2007 11:21PM]

wtf

[shimman @ Jun 13th 2007 2:42AM]

this method will increase the data density considerably but with the expense of slow reading & writing + unreliable data integrity.

of course, nand flash is less reliable than nor flash from the beginning, but toshiba is pushing it even more. hopefully, their ecc circuit is good enough to provide reliable sporage for less

this will only make those fake flash memory card makers happy & we might be burnt with unreliable & slow memory card

these will probably be used for cheaper cards & ssds

[Don @ Jun 13th 2007 3:08PM]

This thing looks just like the chip inside the head of the t-800 Terminator. Skynet will be pleased.