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Samsung Develops 16 Gb NAND Flash

2005-09-12 (월)
크게 작게
The World’s First Chip Can Store Data Equivalent
to 200 Years of a 40-Page Daily


By Kim Sung-jin
Staff Reporter


Samsung Electronics has developed the world’s first 16-gigabit (Gb) NAND flash memory chip, using the in-house developed state-of-the-art 50-nanometer design rule technology.


The current semiconductor industry standard for mass production is 80-nanometer technology.

At its annual press conference in Seoul, the world’s biggest memory chipmaker unveiled the prototype of the new NAND flash, saying it will be able to boost storage capacity in a wide range of digital consumer electronic devices including cellular phones, digital cameras and MP3 players.

The world’s highest-density flash memory chip can store data equivalent to 200 years of a 40-page daily newspaper, 8,000 digital music files or 32 hours of DVD-quality music files on a single chip, Samsung said.

The new chip holds 16.4 billion functional transistors, each measuring one two-thousandths of the thickness of a strand of human hair.

The world’s most profitable chipmaker‘s fingernail-sized NAND flash boasts the industry’s smallest cell size of 0.00625 square microns per bit. The cell size has been reduced by 25 percent from that of the 60nm technology applied to the 8Gb NAND memory developed last year.

Samsung expects the 16Gb memory device to accelerate further expansion of the NAND flash memory market, eventually replacing mini hard disk drives (HDDs) and HDDs for personal computers as mainstream memory storage devices. Apart from other memory chips, flash memory can retain and store information even when the power supply is switched off.

Korea’s semiconductor giant plans to mass-produce the chip in the latter half of next year.


``I am confident that the 50nm 16Gb NAND flash will not only heighten Korea’s national image as a global semiconductor powerhouse but also provide Korea with an opportunity to shore up the international competitiveness of information technology industry in decades to come,’’ said Hwang Chang-gyu, president and CEO of Samsung’s semiconductor business, at the news conference.

According to the world’s second-biggest semiconductor maker, the global market for the NAND flash memory market will reach $18 billion by 2010, up from $10.1 this year.

sjkim@koreatimes.co.kr


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