Samsung begins production of Gen 8 V-NAND

Samsung said on Monday that it has begun production of 1Tb Gen 8 V-NAND.

The chip has 236 layers, more than those of Micron’s with 232 layers that launched early this year.

Samsung used its double stack method as it did for Gen 7 V-NAND, sources said.

The tech giant said its 1Tb TLC(triple level cell) Gen 8 V-NAND had the highest bit density in the market.

It also comes with Toggle DDR 5.0 interface, allowing for a data input/output speed of 2.4Gbps.

The chip also supports PCIe 4.0 interface and will also support PCIe 5.0 later, Samsung said.

Competition in NAND flash between Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron has been intensifying in recent years.

Most of these companies have highlighted the number of layers their NAND chips have.

Micron began mass production of its 232-layer NAND in July and SK Hynix had said it plans to begin mass production of 238-layer NAND in 2023.

China’s YMTC, a relative newcomer in the sector, also announced its own 232-layer NAND in August.

Samsung was the first to commercialize V-NAND technology back in 2013. The V is short for vertical and NANDs are stacked vertically with a whole that connects them.

The tech giant began to have two stacks of vertically stacked NANDs with its Gen 7 NAND.

But having two stacks is not necessarily better than a single stack as it now has two holes to group the stacks, which makes it more vulnerable to data loss and affects data transfer speed.