Hynix Begins Mass Producing 20 nm Class Technology 64 Gb NAND Flash

[btarunr]

Hynix Semiconductor Inc., today announced that it has begun mass producing 64 Gigabit (Gb) NAND Flash using 20nm class technology at its 300mm Fabrication, M11 in Cheongju site. The Company developed this cutting edge technology last February.

Hynix’s 20nm class 64Gb chip doubles the density in a package over the current 32Gb product. 20nm class process technology also provides a 60% increase in productivity over Hynix's existing 30nm class technology. By providing these high density and cost efficient chips, Hynix will respond to the needs of advanced mobile solutions which require smaller size and higher density storage capacity.



The Company said it has also developed NAND Flash solution products which combine Hynix’s 30nm class 32Gb Flash chips and controller devices from Anobit, an Israeli NAND-based solution provider, through a strategic alliance between the two companies. This solution product operates at a high speed and significantly improves the reliability as a storage device. The newly mass-produced 20nm class NAND Flash chips will also be combined with the controller device and will be validated in September 2010.

"Hynix decided to mass produce the industry’s highest density64Gb chips using 20nm class technology in order to fully satisfy demand from the customers. With these 20nm class 64Gb chips, the Company is enabled to provide customized, high performance products in a timely manner which perfectly suitsmobile solutions including smartphones, table PCs and others,” said Dr. S.W. Park, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Hynix.

[LAN_deRf_HA]

So finally we may see a reduction in ssd cost. Probably only 25-35% at best though because of controller prices. And the next drop will take another 2 years.... by the time this is cheap enough to go main stream WD will have a 2.4 TB raptor with 4 ms access time. Either they need to come up with another method of reducing costs besides infrequent die shrinks or we're going to need a whole new technology if we're to ever replace hard drives.

[GENTLEMEN]

If I got this right, 64Gb = 8GB. Well, I don't mind having blisteringly higher-than-traditional-HDD speeds, but I find the idea of higher-density SSDs a giant leap towards becoming full HDD replacements.

EDIT: Imagine squeezing more chips on a 3.5 SDD. Something to bridge the capacity expensive 2.5 and the UBER expensive pci-e based SSDs.

[slyfox2151]

in 2 years... we will be lucky to see 4TB green drives.... let alone 2.5TB raptors....


3TB (standard internal) drives arnt even out... HDD capacity has been dragging along soo slowly .....

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by slyfox2151

in 2 years... we will be lucky to see 4TB green drives.... let alone 2.5TB raptors....


3TB (standard internal) drives arnt even out... HDD capacity has been dragging along soo slowly .....

because the 2TB+ drives wont work in XP and older OS's.

they wont be bootable either, unless your board has an EFI instead of BIOS

[link2009]

Originally Posted by Mussels

because the 2TB+ drives wont work in XP and older OS's.

they wont be bootable either, unless your board has an EFI instead of BIOS

There was an article at TomsHardware about this.

I don't see why anyone would use a 3 Terabyte drive as a boot drive anyways (unless you only have that single hard disk).

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by link2009

There was an article at TomsHardware about this.

I don't see why anyone would use a 3 Terabyte drive as a boot drive anyways (unless you only have that single hard disk).

i dont see why anyone wants to use a driver over 160GB for their primary disk, but everyone else seems to think its a good idea. the only reason i do, is cause no one makes small capacity 3.5" drives these days

[slyfox2151]

my boot parition is only 32GB on my 1.2TB raid0... (coz my SSD died )

i dont want a 3TB drive for my OS... i want a 6TB drive for my Raid Array... etleast 4 - 6 of them would do nicely.



you have to remember, (most of the time) with incressed density comes incressed speed.

[TheLostSwede]

It doesn't look like the hard drive makers are ready to quite any time soon though...

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Originally Posted by slyfox2151

in 2 years... we will be lucky to see 4TB green drives.... let alone 2.5TB raptors....


3TB (standard internal) drives arnt even out... HDD capacity has been dragging along soo slowly .....

Every time a new raptor comes out it doubles the previous, so next should be 1.2, then 2.4.

[v12dock]

They look proud xD

[Rakesh95]

Originally Posted by v12dock

They look proud xD

No reason they shouldn't

[WarEagleAU]

We should start seeing either 2.5TB or 3.0TB by the end of this year, or at least news of them trickling out. Of course that is from Maximum PC and CPU magazine. I have a 1.0TB HDD and it has everything on it. Id love to have me an SSD for OS and critical programs and maybe one game. Then the new WD Velociraptor Black 600GB For games and such. Then 2.0TB for mass storage. HA HA!

[DaedalusHelios]

The photo looked so odd I couldn't help it. Some western cultures often think of things along this line from that finger gesture. Kind of like how our peace sign of the two fingers upwards means different things in other cultures.

I would hope ram costs on the consumer end will go down soon. I wonder if this move by Hynix will make ram cost more or less.

[jimmylao]

Originally Posted by DaedalusHelios

The photo looked so odd I couldn't help it. Some western cultures often think of things along this line from that finger gesture. Kind of like how our peace sign of the two fingers upwards means different things in other cultures.

I would hope ram costs on the consumer end will go down soon. I wonder if this move by Hynix will make ram cost more or less.

Hahaha, to answer your question ram costs will not go down completely like it did 2 years ago with DDR2. Hynix introduced this new fab to NAND flash memory, whereas ram is based upon DRAM. The price of DDR3 will probably go down when DDR4 comes out speculated in 2012.

[TIGR]

This won't directly impact DDR3 prices because DDR3 is based on DRAM, a volatile non-flash memory [which has transistors and capacitors], whereas this is flash NAND memory [transistors but no capacitors]. All flash memory is non-volatile (which means it doesn't lose its data when its power supply is removed). Different types of memory for different applications. This will directly impact SSDs and some mobile devices.

About HDDs—HDD manufacturers may not see enough need for higher-capacity models to make their development a critical priority. What percentage of computer users out there would you guess have a need for even 2TB of total storage capacity per computer? Whatever percentage actually needs more than that probably consists mostly of power users who can run more than one HDD. So how much market is there really for >2TB HDDs? (Personal note: on average, my customers these days are looking for ~1TB of total usable HDD capacity.)

At any rate, I could see $1/GB being average for mainstream SSDs twelve to fifteen months from now.

[gumpty]

Originally Posted by TIGR

About HDDs—HDD manufacturers may not see enough need for higher-capacity models to make their development a critical priority. What percentage of computer users out there would you guess have a need for even 2TB of total storage capacity per computer? Whatever percentage actually needs more than that probably consists mostly of power users who can run more than one HDD. So how much market is there really for >2TB HDDs? (Personal note: on average, my customers these days are looking for ~1TB of total usable HDD capacity.)

I agree. As networking becomes cheaper and simpler to implement, more and more consumers will move to centralized data storage. One small cheap NAS with a couple of TB of storage is probably enough for 99% of households. All the family's computers that connect to it will only need a small boot drive.
That's the way I'd set things up, anyway.