- Micron Technology Inc on Tuesday said it started shipping its most advanced NAND flash chip made up of 232 layers of memory cells that can support intense data use from consumer gadgets, cars and data centers.
A NAND flash chip is a storage chip that retains data even when a device is turned off, unlike a DRAM chip which loses data when the power is off.
The latest chip transfers data 50% faster than Micron’s previous generation NAND chips, said Alvaro Toledo, general manager of the data center storage division.
While logic chips have become faster with smaller transistor sizes, in the past decade storage chips have been increasing the number of layers after hitting challenges getting the improvements and cost savings needed just from shrinking the transistor size.
Toledo said 16 of these 232-layer NAND chips can be packaged together in a casing about a third of the size of a stamp and can hold 2 TeraBytes of data.
Mass production of the 232-layer NAND is expected to start in late 2022, he said.
