Toshiba's new BiCS 3D NAND should make SSDs cheaper and more reliable

Toshiba and Sandisk today announced that they've developed 48 layer stacked 3D NAND flash memory that should make SSDs cheaper and more reliable.Production of the 3D NAND flash memory starts in the second half of 2015 and mass production should start next year.

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The two companies call their 48 layer 3D NAND memory "BiCS NAND" , an abbreviation for Bit Cost Scalable NAND. In 2016 the production of the 3D flash memory should be at full pace and by then also Fab2, near the Japanese Yokkaichi, should be up and running. This Fab is currently specially built for the production of Toshiba's and Sandisk's 3D NAND.

Toshiba and Sandisk hope to increase the capacity of SSDs while lowering the prices with the BiCS NAND. The companies are behind Samsung which was first to introduce 3D NAND, first with 24 layers. Later the Korean technology giant introduced 32 layer 3D NAND, which Samsung calls V-NAND.

By stacking layers, manufacturers hope to increase data density without having to resort to smaller NAND cell sizes. Stacking layers of NAND with current cell sizes should make NAND memory cheaper and more reliable.

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