SK hynix, the South Korean chipmaker, officially announced that it has developed its new densely layered NAND Flash components for the memory market. According to its official press release, it claims to have successfully manufactured the world’s first 238-layers TLC 4D NAND chip.
First announced at the Flash Memory Summit 2022, SK hynix’s new NAND memory is a 512Gb chip and thanks to the number of layers, it also beats out Micron’s own recently announced 232-layer TLC NAND chip. On another note, the new 238-layer NAND is the company’s 2nd densely manufactured chip in its portfolio. Its first densely packed chip having been manufactured back in 2020, with 176 layers.
“SK hynix secured global top-tier competitiveness in perspective of cost, performance and quality by introducing the 238-layer product based on its 4D NAND technologies,” Jungdal Choi, Head of NAND Development at SK hynix, said in his keynote speech during the event. “We will continue innovations to find breakthroughs in technological challenges.”
Specs-wise, SK hynix’s 238-layer NAND chip is expected to increase overall productivity by 34% more than its 176-layer predecessor. In addition, the data transfer speeds of the new NAND chip are also 50% faster over the previous generation, at 2.4Gb per second. More importantly, the energy consumption of the new chip has also been decreased by 21%, thus allowing the manufacturer to meet its own ESG commitment.
As for when we’ll be able to experience the new NAND chips Sk hynix is expected to put its 238-layer product into mass production sometime within the first half of 2023, with the first clients expected to be players within the PC SSD storage industry, before it even begins to make its products available to both the smartphone market, as well as clients that design and manufacturer high-capacity SSDs for servers a little later down the road. At the same time, the company says that it plans on introduces a new and improved 238-layer NAND next year, but one with 1Tb speeds.
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