Western Digital Announces BICS4 3D NAND with 96 Layers

Western Digital announced that it has successfully developed its next-generation 3D NAND technology, BiCS4. The new BICS4 technology features 96 layers of vertical storage capability. To put that in perspective, it is an increase of 30% percent over the current BICS3 which features 64 layers.

The new technology is a creation of the NAND joint venture between Toshiba Corporation and Western Digital. The two companies and their joint venture already have a lot of success, which is thanks to the BICS3 technology. This year, BICS3 is estimated to make up more than 75 percent of WD’s overall 3D NAND supply.

The new BICS4 technology will initially make up a 256-gigabit chip, but that’s just the beginning. Later, it will ship in a range of capacities, including a terabit on a single chip. That is impressive. How the performance will be is something that we’ll have to wait and see.

“Our successful development of the industry’s first 96-layer 3D NAND technology demonstrates Western Digital’s continued leadership in NAND flash and solid execution to our technology roadmap,” said Dr Siva Sivaram, executive vice president of memory technology at Western Digital. “BiCS4 will be available in 3-bits-per-cell and 4-bits-per-cell architectures, and it contains technology and manufacturing innovations to provide the highest 3D NAND storage capacity, performance and reliability at an attractive cost for our customers. Western Digital’s 3D NAND portfolio is designed to address the full range of end markets spanning consumer, mobile, computing and data centre.”

Availability

While the development is a success, there’s still some time until we get our hands on it. Chips made with the new technology will sample to OEM partners in the second half of 2017. The production output will then commence in 2018.