64 GB Coming to SD Cards, USB Drives

Portable storage and SSDs will soon get bigger.

Tuesday Samsung announced that it had begun mass-producing the industry's first 3-bit-per-cell, 64 Gb (8 GB) MLC NAND flash chip using 20-nm-class processing. The news follows Samsung's introduction of 32 Gb (4 GB) 3-bit NAND flash using 30-nm-class processing last November, and the company's 32 Gb MLC NAND using 20-nm-class processing unleashed in April.

"20-nm-class means a process technology node somewhere between 20 and 29 nanometers and 30-nm-class means a process technology node somewhere between 30 and 39 nanometers," the company said.

In addition to the larger capacity, Samsung's new NAND flash will use Toggle DDR (Double Data Rate) 1.0 specifications, offering a 60-percent higher productivity level than the previous 30-nm-class, 32 Gb 3-bit NAND using SDR (Single Data Rate).

"By now entering into full production of 20nm-class 64Gb 3-bit devices, we expect to accelerate adoption of our high-performance NAND solutions that use Toggle DDR technology, for applications that also require high-density NAND," said Seijin Kim, vice president, Flash Memory Planning/Enabling, Samsung Electronics.

Samsung's new 8 GB chips are expected to arrive in USB Drives, SD cards, smartphones and SSDs while replacing the current 4 GB (32 Gb) devices on the market. No particular timeframe was given however the new devices may begin to appear soon and offer 8 GB minimum and 64 GB maximum.