SanDisk and Toshiba has decided to venture on to the NAND Flash market and has revealed that it is about to transition to a new manufacturing process for its multi-level cell (MLC) flash circuits. Today they use a 70nm process in its 300mm plant, Fab 3, which is housed by Toshiba in Japan, but now they will start manufacturing MLC NAND Flash circuits using a 56nm process and they expect to have the first products based on the new circuits ready and available during the first half of 2007. Through its MLC design and the new manufacturing process they claim to be the storage density market leader.
They have namely planned to launch a single-chip at 8Gb (1 Gigabyte) MLC NAND Flash made with the new 56nm process. During the second quarter they are planning to double the density of these circuits to 16Gb (2 Gigabyte), which is also twice the storage density of today’s circuit made with the 70nm process.
“The technology and design advances will help enable SanDisk products to offer approximately twice the improvement in write performance compared to the 70nm generation. We are pleased with the joint development of 56nm advanced technology with Toshiba, and expect it to become a production workhorse in Fab 3 during the second half of this year.”
SanDisk’s and Toshiba’s progress makes us hope for more and more affordable NAND Flash circuits, which in turn hopefully means that SanDisk will broaden its assortment of SSD harddrives with both higher storage capacity and lower prices.
