Despite the fact that 3D NAND technology may not be available for another ten years, Samsung has talked about its plans to provide SSDs with capacities of up to Petabytes. Along with other well-known flash memory companies like Micron, Kioxa, Arm, Solidigm, Phison, and others, Samsung Electronics attended the China Flash Memory Market Summit (CFMS2023) this year.
The audience and Samsung Electronics had a discussion about the “Revolution of Flash Memory and Towards a New Era.” This discussion brought to light the company’s capacity for high-level memory capacities and the challenges it faced in developing its 3D NAND flash memory to achieve such a high capacity.
Physical scaling, logical scaling, and package technology are three levels of technology that are not only developing but are theoretically capable of reaching capacities of one petabyte (PB), or 1,024 terabytes, according to Kyungryun Kim, VP/GM of NAND Product Planning Group at Samsung Electronics (TB). By today’s technological standards, the company won’t accomplish that goal for another ten years, though. The business is also aiming to use quad-level cell technology for more memory devices and concentrating on improving the technology.
The business also displayed the PM1743 series PCIe 5.0 solid-state drive while discussing the evolutionary paths to reaching penta-level capacities (SSD). The new PM1743 series has been tested to be compatible with Intel and AMD PCIe Gen 5 platforms and is up to 40% more energy efficient than earlier models.
Samsung has never been particularly vocal about its technological advancements, particularly 3D NAND memory.
The business is working to increase the adoption rate of quad-level cell 3D NAND devices in the marketplace. Samsung believes that by emphasising more modern controller technology, these objectives will be met.
The business currently scales 3D NAND devices physically. However, to have memory device access above 1,000 layers, the company would need to conduct research on logical scaling. Increasing the number of bits of information stored in each cell would be possible through logical scaling.
Competitor Kioxia has been more open about its developments while the company has kept quiet about its technology. In 2019, the business unveiled penta-level cell 3D NAND memory that could store up to five bits per cell (5 bpc).
Kioxia advanced past the 5 bpc technology to reach 6 bpc two years later. The business claimed that it was also investigating ways to develop as high as 8 bpc, producing an octa-level cell 3D NAND memory device. As of now, the company hasn’t gone that far.
For many 3D NAND manufacturers, storing multiple bits per cell presents numerous difficulties. One such challenge that all companies are currently battling to overcome is identifying materials capable of storing various voltage states while also being able to distinguish between them to prevent interference.
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