SK hynix Starts Mass Production of World’s First 321-High NAND

SK Hynix has once again pushed the boundaries of semiconductor technology, announcing today the mass production of the world’s first 321-layer 4D NAND flash memory. This groundbreaking achievement surpasses the company’s own previous record of 238 layers and marks a significant leap forward in storage density and performance. By employing an innovative “3 plugs” process technology, SK hynix has overcome the challenges of stacking such a high number of layers, paving the way for faster, more power-efficient storage solutions in the era of AI and big data.

SK hynix Achieves Record 321-Layer NAND

With the adoption of the same development platform from the 238-high NAND on the 321-high product, the company could also improve productivity by 59%, compared with the previous generation, by minimizing any impacts from a process switch.

New NAND Flash: Faster, More Efficient, Built for AI

The latest product comes with an improvement of 12% in data transfer speed and 13% in reading performance, compared with the previous generation. It also enhances data reading power efficiency by more than 10%.

SK hynix Targets AI Storage Market with New NAND

SK hynix plans to steadily expand the use of the 321-high products by providing them to the nascent AI applications, which require low power and high performance.

Jungdal Choi, Head of NAND Development at SK hynix, said that the latest development brings the company a step closer to the leadership of the AI storage market represented by SSD for AI data centers and on-device AI. “SK hynix is on track to advancing to the Full Stack AI Memory Provider by adding a perfect portfolio in the ultra-high performance NAND space on top of the DRAM business led by HBM.”