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Samsung announces new .6mm-thick NAND memory package

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On November 6, 2009, 2:57 PM EST

Samsung announced that it has produced the world's thinnest multi-chip memory package for smartphones, portable media players, and other devices. The package measures a mere .6mm in height and contains 32GB of storage. Samsung's new product is 40% thinner and lighter than currently available memory packages.

The .6mm-package contains eight 30nm, 32Gb NAND flash chips, each measuring only 15um (.015mm) thick. This super thin multi-die memory package overcomes the conventional technology limits of a chip's resistance to external pressure when under 30um in height, and will allow for double the density of previous multi-chip packages, according to Samsung. The company has not publicly named any customers for the new product, but I imagine they'll find a home in various gadgets soon enough.

Research from iSuppli suggests that demand for memory cards of 2GB densities and higher will grow from 310 million units in 2009 to 7.7 billion units by 2012. The outfit also estimates demand for memory cards 16GB and higher to be 35 million units this year, and 530 million by 2012 -- a 15-fold growth.

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User Comments (22)

Post a comment
njel
on November 6, 2009
3:15 PM

They could maybe create an extendable SSD with that.

Imagine you could extend the capacity of your SSD just by adding more of those little pieces.

Reply

Wagan8r
on November 6, 2009
3:17 PM

That's some amazing technology. I would be curious to see what the pricetag on these things are however. It would be cool if Samsung made an SSD with these chips!

Reply

poundsmack
on November 6, 2009
4:02 PM

what i really want to see if a PCI card that has slots that you can put flash storage chips on. like ram slots on a mother board that way you can upgrade your storage without buying new hard drives etc... a man can dream though, a man can dream....

Reply

IvanAwfulitch
on November 6, 2009
4:10 PM

Can you imagine just how amazing the next phone that uses this would be? With that kind of technology, they could make an amazingly thin phone with blazing fast response time, and lots of storage space. Things get smaller and smaller every day.

Reply

elroacho72
on November 6, 2009
4:11 PM

That is crazy cool.Combine this with the USB 3.0 even better.SSD are going to get bigger an bigger.

Reply

buttus
on November 6, 2009
4:19 PM

WOW. 32Gb in such a small chip. Most impressive. This would be fantastic in the iPhone or iPod touch. SSD hard drive capacities should soar with this new tech...let alone smart phones or MP3 players.

Reply

TomSEA
on November 6, 2009
4:38 PM

This is amazing technology. I can't believe how evolved hardware, memory and processors have come in the last 20 years. There has been more innovation in the last 20 years than in the previous 2000. Just mind boggling...

Reply

HaMsTeYr
on November 6, 2009
5:11 PM

@ poundsmack:

Didn't you know that you can already make your own SSD drive using CF cards and a PCI card? hahahaha its not so much of a dream anymore boy!~

Reply

pioneerx01
on November 6, 2009
5:50 PM

That is very cool to see storage technology getting, faster, safer, smaller and yet bigger all at a same time. SO now when can I get 512GB flash drive and how much is it going to cost me?

Reply

waterytowers
on November 6, 2009
6:38 PM

I am thinking about a 1TB drive in my PVR that is no bigger than a standard usb stick. I think this may be a reality in the next 5 years. [link]

Reply

slh28
on November 6, 2009
7:08 PM

How much memory do people need in a phone or mp3 player anyway? I only have about 40gb of music and pictures don't take up that much space anyway

Reply

Timonius
on November 6, 2009
7:19 PM

but then you start adding videos, games (real ones!), etc....

Reply

zaidpirwani
on November 6, 2009
8:31 PM

slh28 said:

How much memory do people need in a phone or mp3 player anyway? I only have about 40gb of music and pictures don't take up that much space anyway

the more memory the better, as soon, these little hand-helds will replace the conventional netbook and with USB 3.0, these will become of much use, like in store video downloads, blue ray takes your 25Gb at least, so even if we get about 128 in an iphone, it is not that much considering the size of the video files currently on the market, I mean blue ray and HD....

Reply

Xclusiveitalian
on November 6, 2009
10:39 PM

Thats amazing, .015mm is really small, the future is now. Cameras, phones, mp3's are going to have tons of memory in the future I just hope technology gets cheaper because they always seem to find a way to make something cheaper to manufacture yet it goes up in price.

Reply

Colonel Lance
on November 7, 2009
10:59 AM

I just have one thing to say: That is darn tooten tiny.

Reply

Deso
on November 7, 2009
5:17 PM

How thick are normal NAND memories?

Reply

Rick
on November 7, 2009
5:42 PM

Deso said:

How thick are normal NAND memories?

TFA:

Samsung's new product is 40% thinner and lighter than currently available memory packages.

It was particularly tricky, so I had to have Wolfram Alpha crunch the numbers:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.6mm*40%

Reply

Deso
on November 7, 2009
11:22 PM

Rick said:

Deso said:

How thick are normal NAND memories?

TFA:

Samsung's new product is 40% thinner and lighter than currently available memory packages.

It was particularly tricky, so I had to have Wolfram Alpha crunch the numbers:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.6mm*40%

It said it was 40 % thinner then currently available memory, it can be comparing memory that is also thin but not the standard, currently available is a very broad word.

and on another note... the link you gave me is even incorrect.... you can't divied 40 % of a value and then take the new value times 40 % again and get the same number, let me demonstrate 40 % out of 100 is 60

60 times 40% of 60 = 24 which means total is 84 not 100.

Reply

Rick
on November 8, 2009
1:06 AM

It said it was 40 % thinner then currently available memory, it can be comparing memory that is also thin but not the standard, currently available is a very broad word.

and on another note... the link you gave me is even incorrect.... you can't divied 40 % of a value and then take the new value times 40 % again and get the same number, let me demonstrate 40 % out of 100 is 60

60 times 40% of 60 = 24 which means total is 84 not 100.

Well sir, I didn't divide by anything. Your explanation doesn't really explain the error I made either, so I'll clear it up.

What I did do, is multiply. I thought these chips were 40% of the thickness of regular NAND chips... 0.6mm * 0.4 is correct in that regard, but only if the article hadn't actually said 40% less. So, I certainly made a mistake.

Here's the correct version, which is 0.6mm * 60% = 0.36mm

Lastly, your question was still answered in the article stub, regardless of my poor arithmetic.

Reply

Deso
on November 8, 2009
10:38 AM

Well sir, I didn't divide by anything. Your explanation doesn't really explain the error I made either, so I'll clear it up.

What I did do, is multiply. I thought these chips were 40% of the thickness of regular NAND chips... 0.6mm * 0.4 is correct in that regard, but only if the article hadn't actually said 40% less. So, I certainly made a mistake.

Here's the correct version, which is 0.6mm * 60% = 0.36mm

Lastly, your question was still answered in the article stub, regardless of my poor arithmetic.

I intend no offence will this post I'm just gonna explain the math again to you because you did not understand what I was saying and explain what answere I wanted from my original question, I do understand that I have poor english grammar skills and I sometimes don't even understand what I have written myself when I read it after I have written it, anyways I hope this will make it perfectly clear what my original question and my quote intended to say.

My question was not answered in the stub, I asked how thin NORMAL nand memory is, the article does not explain how thick that is, it simple states "40% smaller then currently available memory", If you didn't notice no particular memory is named and I'm sure there are lots of different thinness of memory on the market, for example lets say 1.20 mm 1.25 mm 1.3 mm , what I was asking was which is the normal thinness, not what the thickness was on the last memory chip that was the thinnest. The normal thinness is not necessarily the thinness the memory the article compared with.

Actually your still wrong, your saying the memory the samsung was compared with is .96 mm thick.

The memory that the article is comparing with is 1.00 mm thick

When you calculate if something is smaller then something you don't just use random % numbers, you use the original number itself (1.00mm) and multiply that with 0.40(40%)

1.00*0.40=0.60 0.60 is 40 % less then 1.00

agian I would like to state that this is not intended to look like any kind of insult, I'm just trying to make my points clear.

Reply

Rick
on November 8, 2009
7:08 PM

I would like to state that this is not intended to look like any kind of insult, I'm just trying to make my points clear.

There you go - that makes sense.

Ahh, even on the second try, I fudged up. I now owe you dinner and movie. :-)

Reply

Deso
on November 8, 2009
8:44 PM

There you go - that makes sense.

Ahh, even on the second try, I fudged up. I now owe you dinner and movie. :-)

It's a date ! ^_^

Reply

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