Western Digital has started production of the world’s first 64-layer 3D NAND flash chips, developed in partnership with Toshiba. WD and Toshiba – which recently announced it intends to sell a stake in its NAND business following poor turnover – partnered to create BiCS, or Bit Cost Scaling, which is a new method of vertical 3D stacking. BiCS is being used to manufacture a pilot production of 512GB SSD drives. Mass production of 64-layer 3D NAND drives is expected to follow during the second-quarter of 2017.
“The launch of the industry’s first 512Gb 64-layer 3D NAND chip is another important stride forward in the advancement of our 3D NAND technology, doubling the density from when we introduced the world’s first 64-layer architecture in July 2016,” Dr. Siva Sivaram, Executive Vice President of Memory Technology at Western Digital, said. “This is a great addition to our rapidly broadening 3D NAND technology portfolio. It positions us well to continue addressing the increasing demand for storage due to rapid data growth across a wide range of customer retail, mobile and data center applications.”
WD will present more information on how this feat has been made possible at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) on 7th February.
