Samsung Begins Production Of 16Gb NAND Flash Memory

Samsung has announced that they are beginning volume production of higher-density flash memory.

Samsung claims to be the first to accomplish the feat of mass-producing 16 gigabit NAND flash memory, which is being manufactured at 51 nm, down from 60 nm with previous 8 gigabit technology.

The new 16Gb chip which has a multi-level cell (MLC) structure can facilitate capacity expansion by offering 16 gigabytes (GBs) of memory in a single memory card. Furthermore, by applying the new process technology, Samsung has accelerated the chips read and write speeds by approximately 80 percent over current MLC data processing speeds.

Apple currently uses flash memory in many of its products, including the iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, and the upcoming iPhone. Rumors have been circulating that Apple will adopt Intel's flash caching technology (featured in the Santa Rosa platform) in its future MacBook lineups. Some analysts have even gone so far as to claim that Apple may introduce a totally flash-based laptop.