Samsung Mass-produces 'World's Largest Capacity' 1Tb 8th Gen V-NAND... "Expanding Business in the Automotive Market"

8th Generation V-NAND, Data I/O Speed Improved by 1.2x
Will It Be a Catalyst to Achieve No.1 in Automotive Memory Market?
Samsung "9th Generation V-NAND Mass Production Scheduled for 2024"

Samsung Electronics 1Tb 8th Generation V-NAND / Provided by Samsung Electronics

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Pyeonghwa] Samsung Electronics, which mass-produced 7th generation V-NAND last year, has started mass production of the world's highest capacity 1-terabit (Tb) 8th generation V-NAND within a year. Samsung Electronics announced that it plans to expand its business scope not only to servers but also to the automotive market by leveraging the 8th generation V-NAND. The company aims to secure a leading position in the automotive memory market by 2025 through active acquisition of business opportunities in the automotive electronics sector, which is emerging as one of the three major application areas along with servers and mobile devices.

According to Samsung Electronics on the 7th, the newly mass-produced 1Tb TLC (Triple Level Cell) 8th generation V-NAND is a high-capacity product boasting industry-leading bit density. The bit integration per wafer has significantly improved compared to the previous generation. Bit density refers to the number of bits stored per unit area.

Additionally, the latest NAND flash interface, Toggle DDR 5.0, is applied, supporting data input/output speeds of up to 2.4 gigabits per second (Gbps). This is about 1.2 times faster than the 7th generation V-NAND. Furthermore, a PCIe 4.0 interface is also provided. In the future, support for PCIe 5.0 is planned.

Heo Seonghoe, Vice President of the Flash Development Office at Samsung Electronics’ Memory Business Division, said to showcase these features, "We have secured foundational technology that controls interference phenomena caused by reducing both the planar area and height of cells through 3D scaling technology, thereby reducing the volume of the cells."

Samsung Electronics plans to lead the high-capacity trend in the next-generation enterprise server market by leveraging the 8th generation V-NAND. Given the high growth potential of the server market and strong demand for high value-added products, the company aims to increase its business opportunities in the related market. It also plans to expand its business into the automotive market, which requires high reliability. In automotive electronics, the system-level requirements have recently improved, increasing the amount of memory installed per vehicle and raising related specifications.

Regarding this, Han Jinman, Vice President of Samsung Electronics’ Memory Business Division, said during a conference call following the Q3 earnings announcement on the 27th of last month, "As the autonomous driving era fully opens, we expect demand for vehicle data centers to expand," predicting that automotive electronics could become one of the three major application areas alongside servers and mobile devices.

Samsung Electronics plans to proactively prepare a high-performance lineup including LPDDR5 and server-grade SSDs in the automotive electronics market to realize the concept of a "server on wheels." The company also announced its goal to achieve the number one position in the automotive memory market by 2025 through strategic execution from a mid- to long-term perspective.

Samsung will continue to maintain its technological lead in NAND to solidify its influence in the NAND market, where it has been the global leader since 2002. Despite the recent downturn in the semiconductor industry centered on memory, Samsung Electronics has stated its intention to continue expanding its presence in the NAND market by leveraging cost competitiveness without any production cuts or investment reductions.

Earlier, Samsung Electronics showcased various next-generation memory solutions, including plans for mass production of the 8th generation V-NAND, at the 'Flash Memory Summit' in August and 'Samsung Tech Day' in October. Samsung plans to mass-produce the 9th generation V-NAND in 2024 and develop and introduce 1000-layer V-NAND by 2030.

According to market research firm Omdia, as of the second quarter of this year, Samsung Electronics held a 33.3% share of the global NAND market, ranking first. Following Samsung were SK Hynix (20.4%), Japan’s Kioxia (16.0%), and the U.S. companies Western Digital (13.0%) and Micron (13.0%). The global NAND market is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 9.4% until 2026, reaching a scale of $107.199 billion (approximately 151.1399 trillion KRW).

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