Just in time for Flash Memory Summit, Micron is saying their fifth era of 3D NAND flash reminiscence, with a record-breaking 176 layers. The new 176L flash is their second era developed because the dissolution of Micron’s reminiscence collaboration with Intel, after which Micron switched from a floating-gate reminiscence cell design to a charge-trap cell. Micron’s earlier era 3D NAND was a 128-layer design that served as a short-lived transitional node for them to work out any points with the swap to cost lure flash. Micron’s 128L flash has had minimal presence available on the market, so their new 176L flash will in lots of circumstances function the successor to their 96L 3D NAND as nicely.
Micron remains to be withholding many technical particulars about their 176L NAND, with extra info deliberate to be shared on the finish of the month. But for now, we all know their first 176L components are 512Gbit TLC dies, constructed utilizing string stacking of two 88-layer decks—Micron would appear to now be in second place behind Samsung for what number of layers of NAND flash reminiscence cells they will fabricate at a time, and clearly in first place for the full variety of layers on a die.
The swap to a substitute gate/cost lure cell design appears to have enabled a big discount in layer thickness: the 176L dies are 45µm thick, about the identical complete thickness as Micron’s 64L floating-gate 3D NAND. A 16-die stacked package deal is available in at lower than 1.5mm thick, appropriate for many cell and reminiscence card use circumstances. As with earlier generations of Micron 3D NAND, the chip’s peripheral logic is generally fabricated underneath the NAND reminiscence cell stacks, a expertise Micron calls “CMOS under Array” (CuA). This has repeatedly helped Micron ship a few of the smallest die sizes, and Micron estimates their 176L 512Gbit die is about 30% smaller than the most effective their rivals at present provide.
The 176L NAND helps an interface pace of 1600MT/s, up from 1200MT/s for his or her 96L and 128L flash. Read and write (program) latency are each improved by over 35% in comparison with their 96L NAND, or by over 25% in comparison with their 128L NAND. Micron cites an general blended workload enchancment of about 15% for in comparison with their UFS 3.1 modules utilizing 96L NAND.
Micron’s 176L 3D NAND has already began quantity manufacturing and is transport in some Crucial-branded shopper SSD merchandise. However, Micron hasn’t specified which particular Crucial merchandise are actually utilizing 176L NAND (or their 128L NAND, for that matter), so we count on that it is a pretty low-volume launch for now. Still, over the subsequent yr we should always 176L NAND manufacturing ramp as much as larger volumes than their 128L course of ever reached, and we are able to count on a variety of merchandise based mostly on this 176L NAND to be launched and change most of what is utilizing their 96L NAND.
