IEEE Future Directions
Related Articles
Samsung has been leading evolution of SSD memory (Solid State Drive) and managed to stack few layers of memory on the same chip thus increasing capacity. Now Toshiba has announced a leap in stacking by developing the world’s first 48 layer SSD with a single chip capacity of 128Gbit (each cell contains 2 bits) equivalent to 16GB.
The cells use 15nm technology and chips can be aggregated on gum-stick sized memory board with a capacity exceeding 2TB per board.
Toshiba has provided a few samples to its clients but industrial production won’t be available till middle 2016. The plant for manufacturing these 3D stacked SSD is under construction.
Toshiba is not the only one working on multislacking layers of SSD. Intel and Micron have recently announced working on a 32 layer SSD (like Samsung) with a capacity per chip of up to 384Gbit (48GB) resulting in a gum-stick sized memory of 3.5TB or on a 2.5-inch board with a capacity of 10TB, overtaking present hard drive.
Also in this case production will only start next year and probably we should wait till 2017 to have the 10TB SSD at an affordable price and 2020 to reach the pricing point of hard drive. Anyhow, it is just a matter of few more year and we will get more capacity, faster memory and lower power consumption at a lower price! Not bad…
