Technology moves fast. It was only 14 months ago that we went into production with our world-leading 34nm process NAND, and we’ve already moved on to 25nm NAND. In this brief whiteboard video, I explain just how small 25nm is (3,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair) and why our ongoing quest to shrink process technology is vital to the future of storage.
Today, Micron and Intel announced 25nm NAND, the smallest, most advanced semiconductor process technology in the world. This achievement allows us to double the capacity of our highest-density MLC device, enabling up to 64GB in a single package and paving the way for big developments in storage, computing, and consumer electronics.
The video below features highlights from a presentation given by Intel and Micron executives at our 25nm announcement. Learn what our aggressive scaling strategy means for the future of storage and the next generations of NAND.
Since introducing our 34nm NAND nearly a year ago, we’ve made big strides in both performance and reliability. Now, nearly all of our NAND products are built on 34nm—leading the industry in density and efficiency.
In fact, our 34nm process is so solid, we’ve even moved our super-high cycling Enterprise NAND parts to it. We just announced 34nm SLC and MLC Enterprise NAND parts that can hit 300,000 and 30,000 cycles, respectively. These new parts deliver unmatched density, cost-efficiency, and reliability and will open up new potential for NAND storage in enterprise applications. Watch my quick explanation below to understand why.
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about NAND in enterprise applications. Can NAND hit enterprise requirements? Will sub-40nm NAND ever serve this market? Is it really a compelling choice? Put simply: yes. Here are a few reasons why:
Micron’s Kevin Kilbuck, director of strategic NAND marketing talks about the hottest buzz happening at this year’s FMS. It’s been a lively show this year, with an interesting debate about bringing high-quality NAND to enterprise applications, as well as a big announcement from us and Intel on 3-bit-per-cell MLC NAND technology. Let us know what you think about our interview with Kevin, and be sure to stay tuned for future news and updates.
In this 5-minute whiteboard video, strategic marketing director Kevin Kilbuck provides a brief description of the technical differences between SLC, MLC, and 3-bit MLC NAND. He also discusses how these products fit into a NAND process roadmap and why 3-bit MLC can be an effective complement an aggressive shrink roadmap (not a substitute for one). You’ll learn:
• How the cell bit count controls the relationship between die size and density
• Why cell density affects performance and reliability
• Why 3-bit MLC is only suited for specific applications
• How 3-bit MLC can complement an aggressive shrink roadmap
• Why NAND process windows are going to grow in the coming years
Find out more about choosing the right NAND on micron.com/nand.
No doubt about it—our appetite for mobile digital downloads continues to thrive. We’re downloading video, music, games and photos at a record pace. In fact, Nielsen says that online music stores saw more than 1 billion downloads last year. I’m a contributor to these downloads too–as I sit here and write this post, I’m jamming out to my iPod listening to the ever-so inspiring Mick Jagger. But I digress.
The point is, we need the storage capacity in our mobile devices to hold the huge amounts of data we consume. So what’s Micron doing to feed that capacity appetite? Today we announced new 16Gb and 32Gb NAND products built using our ground-breaking 34nm NAND process technology. These new NAND chips not only make it possible to store more on your smartphones, cell phones and MP3 players but also enable bigger and better memory cards, like Lexar’s new 16GB microSDHC card. Built with our super tiny 16Gb die, Lexar’s 16GB microSDHC card, can store up to 48,000 2-megapixel JPEG photos, 4,000 songs, or 80 hours of standard-def video—allowing you to super size your portable device’s capacity and enjoy more of the stuff you love.
And for the photography buffs out there, Micron’s new 32Gb NAND chip has made it possible for Lexar to create a new 32GB Lexar Platinum II SDHC memory card. That’s enough capacity for 12 hours of HD video or over 20,000 5-megapixel images! And since we’ve added a high-speed NAND interface to all of our new high-capacity NAND products, these new cards are seriously fast; speed-rated at 60x. This gives our photo enthusiasts the ability to take full advantage of their camera’s burst-mode setting to capture many images in rapid fire succession.
So whether it’s photos, video, music, or games you’re after, Micron’s new NAND products give your portable devices the additional capacity they need to store all your favorites—so you can watch and rock out to more media than ever before, all from the palm of your hand.
There has been quite a buzz in the industry lately about NAND flash products that are capable of storing more than two bits per cell, so I wanted to just take a minute and provide our perspective.
Simply put–what ultimately matters is having the lowest cost-per-bit solution in volume production at a given moment in time, not how many bits per cell are stored. Now, that said, there’s no question that being able to store more bits per cell results in lower cost. However, there are some serious trade-offs that we think make this option not viable at this time. Most notably–performance and reliability suffer. In fact, we estimate that the performance (measured in write-cycle throughput) for going from two to three bits per cell using the same NAND architecture and process technology could be as much as halved. And reliability, (measured in write-cycle endurance) could be up to an order of magnitude worse (yes—up to 10x worse). Scary stuff. Because having a product that may have a lower bit cost, but doesn’t meet today’s level of performance and reliability limits the value of that product. It’s also worth noting the greater burden on the system implementation of going beyond today’s well-understood MLC technology, such as making sure the controller provides adequate ECC coverage.
Hey guys. The MAST folks asked me to get the blog up to speed on a very exciting announcement—our Enterprise NAND. In a nutshell, Enterprise NAND is a very high endurance SLC NAND device. It has a write/erase cycle endurance of 1 million cycles. Seriously cool–that’s 10X standard NAND. So, what does it mean? Well, it means that NAND, in its various flavors, can play and perform in everything from thumb drives to performance SSDs and now, it also has a home in high endurance, high-transaction applications like data servers. And with the kinds of endorsements it’s getting from the likes of Sun Microsystems and Violin memory, I think we’re seeing NAND really come into its own. Anyway, check out the short video and the announcement for more info.
