Samsung begins mass production of world's first 3-bit 3D V-NAND flash memory

Samsung has just announced that it has began mass production of the world's first 3-bit 3D V-NAND flash memory. This new memory aims to bring about more affordable SSDs while at the same time improving performance and endurance.

Samsung first debuted its 3D V-NAND technology earlier this year when it announced the SSD 850 Pro. 3D V-NAND overcomes the limitations of existing NAND technologies by stacking NAND cells on top of each other - conventional TLC and MLC NAND are planar in architecture.

The benefits of doing so are numerous, but chiefly, it allows Samsung to build chips with higher memory densities that are not only faster but also more durable. In fact, in our review of the SSD 850 Pro, we found it to be the best performing SSD by a considerable margin and Samsung even backs it up with a massive 10-year warranty.

According to Samsung, its new 3-bit 3D V-NAND will offer 128Gbit of capacity per chip. Furthermore, this new memory will also use 32 stacked layers of NAND cells - the SSD 850 Pro's memory uses 24 stacked layers. This has allowed Samsung to "sharply" increase efficiency of memory production and it even claims that compared to its older 10 nanometer-class* 3-bit planar NAND flash, production of the new 3-bit V-NAND has more than doubled wafer productivity.

There's no word yet on when these new drives will arrive, but considering that the SSD 850 Evo has already been spotted earlier last month at IFA 2014, our guess is that it could be available for retail as soon as later this year or early next year, at worse.

Source: Businesswire, KitGuru

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