Micron Technology Inc (MU.O) announced on Tuesday that it has begun shipping its most advanced NAND flash chip, which consists of 232 layers of memory cells and can accommodate intensive data use from consumer electronics, automobiles, and data centers.
A NAND flash chip is a type of storage chip that preserves data even when the power is switched off, unlike a DRAM chip, which loses data when the power is turned off.
According to Alvaro Toledo, general manager of the data center storage division, the latest chip transports data 50% faster than Micron’s previous generation NAND chips.
While logic chips have become quicker with decreasing transistor sizes, storage chips have increased the number of layers in the last decade after failing to achieve the necessary gains and cost reductions by simply shrinking the transistor size.
According to Toledo, 16 of these 232-layer NAND chips may be put together in a case about the size of a stamp and carry 2 TeraBytes of data.He expects mass production of the 232-layer NAND to begin in late 2022.
