"Samsung Electronics to Lead the Era of V-NAND 1000 Layers"

Vice President Song Jaehyuk, Head of Flash Development, Expresses Confidence in Article
Overcoming Limits with Miniaturization Technology... Accelerating 8th Generation NAND Development

Song Jae-hyuk, Vice President and Head of Flash Development at Samsung Electronics Memory Division [Photo by Samsung Electronics]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Heung-soon] "V-NAND's competitiveness ultimately lies in miniaturization. Samsung Electronics will lead the market even in the upcoming era of 1000 layers."

Song Jae-hyuk, Vice President and Head of Samsung Electronics' Flash Development Office, expressed confidence in an article posted on Samsung Newsroom on the 8th, stating, "Samsung Electronics will be the first company to overcome height limitations with 3D scaling (miniaturization) technology that implements the industry's smallest cell size."

NAND flash is a memory device that can continuously store data even without power. The core of the process is stacking technology that vertically stacks semiconductor cells to increase capacity. V-NAND changes the cell structure from the conventional horizontal arrangement to a vertical one. Vice President Song said, "When V-NAND first appeared, the number of stacked layers was low, so there was no need to worry about height," but he predicted, "As the number of layers increases, it is inevitable to face physical limitations someday."

Ultimately, the lower the stacking height even with the same number of layers, the better, according to Vice President Song. Samsung Electronics plans to mass-produce the 176-layer 7th generation V-NAND in the second half of this year. The key feature of this product is that it reduces both the planar area and height of the cells through 3D scaling technology, decreasing the volume (the size the product occupies in a specific space) by up to 35%. This height is similar to competitors' early 100-layer 6th generation products.

Vice President Song introduced, "Samsung Electronics is the only company with 'single stack etching' technology capable of stacking over 100 layers at once and drilling more than one billion holes," adding, "We have secured technological leadership to overcome the physical height limitations and move toward ultra-high layers." Reducing the cell volume can intensify interference between cells, but this can be controlled through single stack etching technology. Based on this competitiveness, Vice President Song is confident that Samsung Electronics will lead the market even in the era of 1000-layer V-NAND."

Previously, Samsung Electronics has maintained the world's number one position in the flash memory field since 2002 with products of the highest performance and quality for 19 years. It is highly likely to maintain the top spot for 20 consecutive years this year. According to market research firm TrendForce, Samsung Electronics led the global NAND market in the first quarter of this year with a 33.5% market share, nearly twice that of second-place Kioxia (18.7%).

The driving force behind dominating the global market for a long time is Samsung Electronics' swift technological prowess. Since entering the related market in 1984, it pioneered new markets with aggressive marketing under the motto "If there is no market, create one" to popularize flash memory. A representative example is leading the popularization of portable flash memory through the USB launched in 2002. Subsequently, focusing on the music player market, it strengthened market dominance with flash memory-based MP3 players. It also paid attention to solid-state drives (SSD), a storage device that can replace hard disks, and commercialized the world's first NAND flash-based SSD in 2006. As of last year, Samsung Electronics holds a 33.3% share of the SSD market, ranking first worldwide.

Samsung Electronics is accelerating the development of the 8th generation V-NAND with over 200 layers, aiming for mass production in the second half of next year. Vice President Song said, "We have already secured the 8th generation V-NAND operation chip," adding, "We are fully prepared to launch products in a timely manner according to customer demands."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.