“By bringing cutting-edge 3D memory technology to volume production, we are able to introduce timely memory lineups that significantly raise the bar for speed and power efficiency,” said Kye Hyun Kyung, executive vice president of Solution Product & Development at Samsung Electronics. “With faster development cycles for next-generation V-NAND products, we plan to rapidly expand the markets for our high-speed, high-capacity 512Gb V-NAND-based solutions.”

The Only Single-stack 3D Memory Die With a 100+ Layer Design

Samsung’s sixth-generation V-NAND features the industry’s fastest data transfer rate, capitalizing on the company’s distinct manufacturing edge that is taking 3D memory to new heights.

Utilizing Samsung’s unique ‘channel hole etching’ technology, the new V-NAND adds around 40-percent more cells to the previous 9x-layer single-stack structure. This is achieved by building an electrically conductive mold stack comprised of 136 layers, then vertically piercing cylindrical holes from top to bottom, creating uniform 3D charge trap flash (CTF) cells.

As the mold stack in each cell area increases in height, NAND flash chips tend to become more vulnerable to errors and read latencies. To overcome such limitations, Samsung has incorporated a speed-optimized circuit design that allows it to achieve the fastest data transfer speed, at below 450 microseconds (μs) for write operations and below 45μs for reads. Compared to the previous generation, this represents a more than 10-percent improvement in performance, while power consumption is reduced by more than 15 percent.

Thanks to this speed-optimized design, Samsung will be able to offer next-generation V-NAND solutions with over 300 layers simply by mounting three of the current stacks, without compromising chip performance or reliability.

In addition, the number of channel holes required to create a 256Gb chip density has decreased to 670 million holes from over 930 million with the previous generation, enabling reduced chip sizes and less process steps. This brings a more than 20-percent improvement in manufacturing productivity.

Leveraging the high-speed and low-power features, Samsung plans to not only broaden the reach of its 3D V-NAND into areas like next-generation mobile devices and enterprise servers, but also into the automotive market where high reliability is extremely critical.

Following today’s introduction of the 250GB SSD, Samsung plans to offer 512Gb three-bit V-NAND SSD and eUFS in the second half of this year. The company also expects to expand production of higher-speed and greater-capacity sixth-generation V-NAND solutions at its Pyeongtaek (Korea) campus starting next year to better meet demand from global customers.

Reference: Samsung V-NAND Mass Production Timeline

Samsung plans to launch a 1-Terabyte version 
within the second half of the year

Samsung Electronics the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing the industry’s first 512-gigabyte (GB) embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) 3.0 for next-generation mobile devices. In line with the latest eUFS 3.0 specification, the new Samsung memory delivers twice the speed of the previous eUFS storage (eUFS 2.1), allowing mobile memory to support seamless user experiences in future smartphones with ultra-large high-resolution screens.

“Beginning mass production of our eUFS 3.0 lineup gives us a great advantage in the next-generation mobile market to which we are bringing a memory read speed that was before only available on ultra-slim laptops,” said Cheol Choi, executive vice president of Memory Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “As we expand our eUFS 3.0 offerings, including a 1-Terabyte (TB) version later this year, we expect to play a major role in accelerating momentum within the premium mobile market.”

Samsung produced the industry-first UFS interface with eUFS 2.0 in January, 2015, which was 1.4 times faster than the mobile memory standard at that time, referred to as the embedded multi-media card (eMMC) 5.1. In just four years, the company’s newest eUFS 3.0 matches the performance of today’s ultra-slim notebooks.

Samsung’s 512GB eUFS 3.0 stacks eight of the company’s fifth-generation 512-gigabit (Gb) V-NAND die and integrates a high-performance controller. At 2,100 megabytes-per-second (MB/s), the new eUFS doubles the sequential read rate of Samsung’s latest eUFS memory (eUFS 2.1) which was announced in January. The new solution’s blazing read speed is four times faster than that of a SATA solid state drive (SSDs) and 20 times faster than a typical microSD card, allowing premium smartphones to transfer a Full HD movie to a PC in about three seconds*. In addition, the sequential write speed also has been improved by 50 percent to 410MB/s, which is equivalent to that of a SATA SSD.

The new memory’s random read and write speeds provide up to a 36-percent increase over the current eUFS 2.1 industry specification, at 63,000 and 68,000 Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS), respectively. With the significant gains in random read and writes that are more than 630 times faster than general microSD cards (100 IOPS), a number of complex applications can be simultaneously run, while achieving enhanced responsiveness, especially on the newest generation of mobile devices.

Following the 512GB eUFS 3.0 as well as a 128GB version that are both launching this month, Samsung plans to produce 1TB and 256GB models in the second half of the year, to further help global device manufacturers in better delivering tomorrow’s mobile innovations.

*The calculation is based on transferring a 3.7GB full HD movie file from a mobile device with the 512GB eUFS 3.0 to a PC with a non-volatile memory express (NVMe) interface SSD.

※ Reference: Comparison of Samsung’s internal memory performance