Micron Technology has started volume shipments of the world’s first 176-layer 3D NAND flash memory.
Micron’s 176-layer NAND is the most technologically advanced NAND node in the market. Compared with the company’s previous generation of high-volume 3D NAND, Micron’s 176-layer NAND improves both read latency and write latency by more than 35 percent — dramatically accelerating application performance.
Featuring approximately 30 percent smaller die size than best-in-class competitive offerings, Micron’s 176-layer NAND’s compact design is ideal for solutions using small form factors.
Sumit Sadana, executive vice president and chief business officer at Micron, said: “We are deploying this technology across our broad product portfolio to bring value everywhere NAND is used, targeting growth opportunities in 5G, AI, cloud and the intelligent edge.”
Micron’s 176-layer NAND serves as an essential building block in technologists’ toolboxes across a broad array of sectors, including mobile storage, autonomous systems, in-vehicle infotainment, and client and data center solid-state drives (SSDs).
Micron’s 176-layer NAND offers improved quality of service (QoS2), a critical design criterion for data center SSDs. This can accelerate data-intensive environments and workloads such as data lakes, artificial intelligence (AI) engines and big data analytics.
For 5G smartphones, the enhanced QoS can enable faster launching and switching across multiple apps, creating a more seamless and responsive mobile experience and enabling true multitasking and full use of 5G’s low-latency network.
Micron’s fifth generation of 3D NAND also features an industry-leading maximum data transfer rate at 1,600 megatransfers per second (MT/s) on the Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) bus, a 33 percent improvement.
The increased ONFI speed leads to faster system bootup and application performance. In automotive applications, this speed will power near instant-on response times for in-vehicle systems as soon as engines are turned on, enhancing the user experience.
Micron is working with industry developers to integrate the new products into solutions. To simplify firmware development, Micron’s 176-layer NAND offers a single-pass programming algorithm, enabling easier integration and speeding time to market.
Micron’s 176-layer triple-level cell 3D NAND is in volume production in Micron’s Singapore fab and now shipping to customers, including through its Crucial consumer SSD product lines. The company will introduce additional new products based on this technology during calendar 2021.
