Toshiba has announced it has begun mass production of NAND flash memory chips using a 24-nanometer manufacturing process. The latest technology advance is being applied to 2-bit-per-cell (MLC) 64Gb (8GB) chips, which are claimed to be the world's smallest and highest density memory parts available right now, while 3 bit-per-cell 32Gb (4GB) products will be made using the same process in the near future.
The chips utilize Toshiba's double data rate (DDR) toggle mode technology for improved data transfer speeds, and are aimed at a wide range of consumer goods, such as smartphones, media players, tablet PCs, and any other device that needs large chunks of memory in a small space. The company already produced 8GB NAND chips using 32nm technology, but the smaller process will allow more of them to be stacked together for higher capacity NAND flash memory modules.
South Korea's Samsung has announced production of "20nm-class" NAND chips, but these are believed to use a 27nm process. Likewise, Hynix Semiconductor has said that it has begun mass production of 64Gb NAND flash chips using 26nm technology, while Intel and Micron begun rolling out the first 25nm NAND memory parts earlier this year.