Toshiba And Samsung Unwrap 256Gb TLC NAND Chips

Fresh from the Flash Memory Summit and Exhibition, two major SSD manufacturers have unveiled new 256Gb (32GB) TLC NAND flash chips. With process node shrinks destined to become fewer and farther between, the only other way for SSDs to continue to see prices fall and drive capacities increase will be continued increases in NAND chip densities. These announcements make for a large jump from the current 128Gb chips featured in many current models.

The simultaneous announcement is amusing, but Toshiba and Samsung are both direct competitors with completely in-house solid-state drive solutions across the full range, from servers to consumers to even smartphones. Both designs are 48-layer sandwiches, 32GB in density, and are designed for TLC operation. In addition to a lower power consumption, Samsung in particular claims 40% better yields, so hopefully this translates into additional price savings for the consumer.

Both Samsung and Toshiba (via SanDisk) are expecting to deliver new SSDs based on these 256Gb chips in 2016, and no doubt these will be large capacity TLC models. One unfortunate side effect is that the chip density means less chips are needed to make the smallest capacity SSD models which in turn directly reduces the potential performance of the drive. The current performance sweet spot is still around 240-256GB, though some 500-512GB models utilizing 128Gb chips are already showing better performance as a result. As these are TLC chips, this theory may be a moot point, but there is still the potential for future half-a-terabyte SSDs to start taking the best performance spots.

Either way, flash NAND is already being produced on 15-19nm nodes; in effect the NAND flash industry has already caught up with Intel’s current 14nm fabrication node and certainly won’t be able to get much past it. This makes these announcements all the more welcome, indicating prices won’t stagnate, and will drop again next year when these drives begin to reach markets.