Micron begins mass production of 34nm NAND flash memory

Micron Technology on Tuesday announced mass production of new 16- and 32-gigabit NAND flash memory chips using 34-nanometer process technology, another step toward more robustly-featured mobile devices, including phones, MIDs, digital cameras, camcorders and netbooks.

Micron's new 32Gb multi-level cell NAND chip is 17 percent smaller than the company's first-generation 32Gb chip, and the new 16Gb MLC NAND chip, at 84mm, provides capacity in a small package.

Micron says it is also now sampling 8- and 16Gb single-level cell (SLC) NAND chips using the 34nm process.

The first place consumers will see the new chips are in flash memory cards and USB flash drives by Lexar.

The first Lexar memory card to feature Micron's new 32Gb NAND chip is the new 32GB Lexar Platinum II SDHC memory card, speed-rated at 60x (Class 4), offering a minimum-sustained write speed of 9MB per second (good for burst mode) and a minimum-sustained read speed of 12MB per second for faster photo transfers.

Micron's 16Gb, 34nm NAND chip, which the company says is approximately one-third the size of a keyboard key, is ideal for ultra-small, high-capacity microSD cards. (The Lexar 16GB microSDHC mobile memory card, for example.)

Micron explains the nitty-gritty:

Both products feature an ONFI 2.1 synchronous interface that delivers transfer speeds of up to 200 megabytes per second (MB/s). In comparison, traditional SLC NAND is limited to 40 MB/s. With this improved transfer speed, the interface delivers the fastest read and write throughputs offered in today's NAND devices. And with solid state drives (SSDs) trending toward a SATA 6 Gb/second interface, the high-speed NAND interface enables manufacturers to design products that deliver twice the throughput of today's existing SATA 3Gb/s solutions. Customers can expect this high-speed interface designed into all future high-density Micron NAND products.