Kioxia and SanDisk introduced a 9th-generation 2Tb QLC 3D flash technology on August 12 with a 4.8 Gb/s interface, 33% faster than their previous generation, and bit density above 37 Gb/mm², up to 60% denser, aimed at AI storage tiers.
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Transcript
Density and speed usually fight each other in flash memory. Pack more bits into a cell and it gets slower. Kioxia and SanDisk just announced a generation that improved both at once. Sixty percent more bit density, above thirty seven gigabits per square millimetre, and an interface a third faster at four point eight gigabits per second. The trick is where the logic lives. Normally the control circuitry and the memory array share a single wafer, so one manufacturing process has to be good at two very different jobs. These chips build them separately, each on its own optimised process, then bond the two together. That is why AI storage has suddenly started caring about QLC, the cheap dense flash everyone used to keep away from performance work.