Micron Begins Sampling 16nm 128Gb MLC NAND

Micron’s been doing its part in recent years to keep NAND progression going at a good pace, and with today’s announcement of its 16nm 128Gb sampling, it looks like things might not change for a while. You might recall that in late 2011, the company, in partnership with Intel, announced the market’s first 128Gb NAND at 20nm. At that time, 20nm 64Gb hit mass-production, so things sure have moved swiftly to be able to sample 16nm 128Gb NAND at this point in time.

Micron’s 16nm 128Gb (16GB) NAND Chip

With this reduction in size, a single 300mm wafer will produce a staggering 6TB worth of storage, and more storage to a wafer means just one thing: cheaper prices once it hits the market. According to Micron, this NAND will be used for virtually everything, including SSDs, flash drives and cards, tablets, ultrathin devices, mobile handsets and so forth.

Micron expects to begin mass-deployment of its 16nm NAND in Q4 2013, and we’d expect that SSDs equipped with it will come in Q1 2014.