Western Digital Unveils High-Density Flash Memory Chip
On June 14, TapTechNews reported that Western Digital previewed the 2-terabyte capacity version of the BICS8 (218-layer) QLCNAND chip at an investor event not long ago, which is also the highest density flash memory chip in the industry at present.
This storage granule is designed specifically to meet the data center and AI storage needs, which can further reduce the cost of high-capacity enterprise-class solid-state drives and meet the increasingly huge data storage needs.
A flash memory granule is formed by stacking and packaging multiple flash memory chips. A single chip of 2 terabytes means that Western Digital can provide a 4-terabyte capacity granule through 16-layer stacking, paving the way for future 128-terabyte and even 256-terabyte enterprise-class solid-state drives.
Robert Soderbery, general manager of Western Digital's flash memory business, also showed the physical object of the BICS8 2-terabyte QLCNAND flash memory chip at this event. The length of this chip is approximately the width of a fingertip:
Soderbery said that this new flash memory product will be officially released soon.
Back to the BiCS8 technology, Western Digital - Kioxia this time adopts a CBA technical route similar to that of Yangtze Memory Xtacking, that is, manufacturing the storage stack and the CMOS control circuit separately, and finally hybrid bonding the two parts.
This model can effectively improve the overall storage density of the flash memory and reduce the operating power consumption while enhancing the read and write performance of the flash memory.
In specific numerical terms, Western Digital said that the BICS8 granule is 15-19% higher in density than the competitor, among which the TLC granule of the 1-terabyte version has a comparable storage density to the 2xxL 1-terabyte QLC granule of the competitor.
In terms of energy efficiency, Western Digital claims that its BICS8 flash memory has 13% lower programming energy consumption (TapTechNews note: original text Program Efficiency) than the competitor.
