Kioxia Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today announced the launch of the second generation of XL-FLASH, a Storage Class Memory (SCM) solution based on its BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory technology, which significantly reduces bit cost while providing high performance and low latency. Product sample shipments are scheduled to start in November this year, with volume production expected to begin in 2023.

The second generation XL-FLASH achieves significant reduction in bit cost as a result of the addition of new multi-level cell (MLC) functionality with 2-bit per cell, in addition to the single-level cell (SLC) of the existing model. The maximum number of planes that can operate simultaneously has also increased from the current model, which will allow for improved throughput. The new XL-FLASH will have a memory capacity of 256 gigabits.

This week at the Flash Memory Summit Conference & Expo, KIOXIA America, Inc.—along with the entire industry - will celebrate an important milestone: the 35th anniversary of its invention of NAND flash memory. While looking back at the transformative technology it invented back in 1987, KIOXIA also has its eyes on the future, defining what's next for flash by introducing innovative new products, form factors, and solutions. At FMS, the company will highlight how it is using flash memory to drive advancements and improvements in a wide variety of applications, including mobile computing, the edge, the cloud, data centers and automotive.

KIOXIA's Scott Nelson, executive vice president and chief marketing officer and Shigeo (Jeff) Ohshima, technology executive, SSD Application Engineering will jointly present a keynote session titled: "KIOXIA: 35 Years of Flash & Beyond." The session will highlight the 35th Anniversary of the invention of flash memory and will look forward to how KIOXIA is driving the future of this game-changing technology.

MaxLinear Inc. today announced the availability of Panther III, the latest in the company's Panther series of storage accelerators. The company is showcasing this product at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, CA, August 2 - 4. Booth 111. Businesses need immediate access to larger and larger amounts of data and, at the same time, are faced with security and CAPEX costs challenges. With its 16 nanometer (nm) DPU architecture, Panther III provides breakthrough data reduction, encryption, deduplication, and data protection and sets a new standard in storage acceleration with a high throughput of 200 Gbps and ultra-low single-pass transformation latency.

Panther III opens new opportunities within the storage market, including all-flash-array and non-volatile memory express (NVMe) systems. As with previous generations of Panther products, Panther III offers powerful data reduction technology that intelligently offloads the CPU to open all tiers of storage to their full bandwidth potential with no CPU or software limitations. These capabilities enable intelligent and faster dataset delivery, high-performance analytics, and improved workload accuracy in fast-growing Edge to disaggregated computing of the public cloud.

Kioxia Corporation today announced that it has collaborated with Aerospike to enhance Aerospike Server Community Edition database - resulting in a 36 % increase in application performance compared with the original software without the enhancement by Kioxia. Testing was performed with KIOXIA FL6 Series enterprise NVMe Storage Class Memory (SCM) SSDs with a software enhancement developed by Kioxia.

The Aerospike database is optimized to run on flash memory and SSD devices and is capable of providing high throughput and low latency on flash memory. Featuring Kioxia's SCM solution, XL-FLASH, the PCIe 4.0 and NVMe 1.4 -compliant KIOXIA FL6 Series SSDs bridge the gap between DRAM and TLC-based drives, making them well-suited to latency-sensitive use cases such as caching layer, tiering and write logging. Currently, in mass production, dual-port KIOXIA FL6 Series drives deliver high endurance (60 DWPD) and are available in capacities up to 3,200 GB.

KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced sampling of the industry's first XFM DEVICE Ver. 1.0-compliant removable PCIe standard attached, NVMe storage device: the XFMEXPRESS XT2. With a new form factor and connector, the XFM DEVICE Ver. 1.0 standard delivers an unparalleled combination of features designed to revolutionize ultra-mobile PCs, IoT devices and a variety of embedded applications.

First introduced in August of 2019, and then presented as a proposal to the JEDEC Subcommittee for Electrical Specifications and Command Protocols, KIOXIA XFMEXPRESS XT2 is a new form factor for PCIe/NVMe specification devices. Featuring a powerful combination of small size, speed and serviceability, XFMEXPRESS technology was developed to enhance next-generation mobile and embedded applications. The XFMEXPRESS XT2 from KIOXIA is the first product to meet the specification of the new JEDEC standard.

Kioxia Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today announced it will begin construction of a state-of-the-art new fabrication facility (Fab2) at its Kitakami Plant in Iwate Prefecture, Japan for the possible expansion of production of its proprietary 3D Flash memory BiCS FLASH. Construction of the facility is scheduled to commence in April 2022 and is expected to be completed in 2023.

The new Fab2 facility will utilize AI-based cutting-edge manufacturing to increase production capacity of the entire Kitakami Plant and further enhance product quality, allowing Kioxia to expand its business organically and take advantage of the medium to long term growth of the flash memory market driven by the accelerating adoption of cloud services, 5G, IoT, AI, automated driving and the metaverse.

Kioxia Corporation, a world leader in memory solutions, today announced the launch of Universal Flash Storage (UFS) Ver. 3.1 [1] embedded flash memory devices utilizing the company's innovative 4-bit per cell quad-level-cell (QLC) technology. For applications needing high density, such as cutting-edge smartphones, Kioxia's QLC technology enables the capability to achieve the highest densities available in a single package.

Kioxia's UFS proof of concept (PoC) device is a 512 gigabyte prototype that utilizes the company's 1 terabit (128 gigabyte) BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory with QLC technology, and is now sampling to OEM customers. The PoC device is designed to meet the increasing performance and density requirements of mobile applications driven by higher resolution images, 5G networks, 4K plus video and the like.

Floadia Corporation, headquartered in Kodaira-shi, Tokyo, has developed a prototype 7-bit-per-cell flash memory chip that can retain analog data for 10 years at 150 degrees Celsius by devising a memory cell structure and control method. With the existing memory cell structure, the problem of characteristic change and variation due to charge leakage was significant, and the data retention was only about 100 seconds.

Floadia will apply the memory technology to a chip that realizes AI (artificial intelligence) inference operations with overwhelmingly low power consumption. This chip is based on an architecture called Computing in Memory (CiM), which stores neural network weights in non-volatile memory and executes a large number of multiply-accumulate calculations in parallel by passing current through the memory array. CiM is attracting worldwide attention as an AI accelerator for edge computing environments because it can read a large amount of data from memory and consumes much less power than conventional AI accelerators that perform multiply-accumulate calculations on CPUs and GPUs.

A new era for flash used in servers and storage is here, and it's being introduced by KIOXIA America, Inc. Today, the company announced the industry's first lineup of Enterprise and Datacenter Standard Form Factor (EDSFF) E3.S SSDs designed with PCIe 5.0 technology - the CD7 Series. Building on the KIOXIA E3.S full-function development vehicle that received a 'Best in Show' award at last year's Flash Memory Summit, the CD7 Series E3.S increases flash storage density per drive for optimized power efficiency and rack consolidation.

Breaking free from the design limitations of the 2.5-inch form factor, the EDSFF E3 family is optimized for the needs of high-performance, highly efficient servers and storage. EDSFF enables the next generation of SSDs to address future data center architectures, while supporting a variety of new devices and applications. It provides improved airflow and thermals, signal integrity benefits, and options for larger SSD capacity points. EDSFF standardizes status LEDs on the drive, which eliminates the need for LEDs on the drive carriers. Support for higher E3.S power budgets than 2.5-inch form factor SSDs and better signal integrity allows EDSFF to deliver the performance promised by PCIe 5.0 technology and beyond.

SkyHigh Memory Limited., a global leader in embedded storage solutions, is introducing 3.0 V 1 Gb - 4 Gb densities 4 KB page and 2 KB page ML-3 products to its family of NAND Flash memories. The new 1 Gb - 4 Gb ML-3 SLC NAND Flash product family devices are designed on 1xnm, the industry's most advanced technology node for SLC NAND products. Available with different interfaces, SkyHigh Memory first-generation Serial (SPI) SLC NAND and third-generation Parallel SLC NAND complete the third generation ML-3 4 Gb - 16 Gb parallel SLC NAND product family already in production.

The new 1 Gb - 4 Gb devices will be offered to support high-reliability systems that store critical data and operate at extended temperatures, up to +105°C. Thanks to its internal ECC engine, the ML-3 product family can support chipsets with as low as a 1-bit ECC engine to accommodate legacy chipsets and modern chipsets with higher ECC engines.

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, the global leader in standards development for the microelectronics industry, today announced the publication of JESD233: XFM Embedded and Removable Memory Device (XFMD) standard. XFMD (XFM stands for Crossover Flash Memory) is a new universal data storage media providing an NVMe over PCI Express interface in a small, thin form factor. The device is designed to bring replaceable storage to devices typically soldered down in IoT devices and embedded applications. Developed by JEDEC's JC-64.1 Subcommittee for Electrical Specifications and Command Protocols, JESD233 is available for download from the JEDEC website.

JESD233 XFMD is a removable, versatile memory solution intended for use in a wide range of applications that require an easy device exchange. Examples include IoT devices, automotive applications, notebook PCs, gaming consoles, video recording devices (drones, surveillance systems, etc.), Extended Reality (AR, VR, MR), and more.

To maximize connectivity between the host and the device, JESD233 XFMD leverages industry-leading standards from PCI-SIG and NVM Express, Inc. The PCI Express interface provides fundamental bus connectivity and NVM Express serves as the higher level protocol for accessing the non-volatile media as a low-latency logical storage device.

KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced sampling of its newest generation of 256 and 512 gigabyte (GB) Universal Flash Storage (UFS) Ver. 3.1 embedded flash memory devices. Housed in 0.8 and 1.0 mm-high packages, the new products improve performance by 30% for random read and 40% for random write - making them thinner and faster than their predecessors. The new KIOXIA UFS devices utilize the company's most current, high-performance BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and are targeted to a variety of mobile applications.

The broad set of power and space conscious applications that utilize embedded flash memory continue to need higher performance and density, and UFS has increasingly been the solution of choice. From a total GB perspective, UFS now accounts for the majority of the demand relative to e-MMC. According to Forward Insights, when combining overall UFS and e-MMC GB demand worldwide, almost 70% of the demand this year is for UFS, and this will continue to grow.

KIOXIA America, Inc. today announced sampling of its 1 terabyte (TB) Universal Flash Storage (UFS) Ver. 3.1 embedded flash memory devices. Housed in a 1.1 mm-high package - making it the thinnest 1 TB UFS offering available - the new product utilizes KIOXIA's BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and achieves sequential read speed of up to 2,050 MB/sec and sequential write speed of up to 1,200 MB/sec.

Mobile devices are constantly evolving, and 5G networks are poised to deliver levels of speed, scale and complexities the likes of which have never been seen before. Reaping the connectivity benefits of 5G - namely, faster downloads and reduced lag time - requires high performance and low power consumption. Additionally, with 5G making it easier and faster for users to store even more on their mobile devices, the storage requirements for smartphones and other applications are increasing at a rapid pace. KIOXIA's 1 TB UFS brings the ultra-high speed read/write performance, low power consumption, shortened application launch times and storage capacity demanded by 5G and other digital consumer products.

Kioxia Corporation and Western Digital Corp., today announced that the companies have developed their sixth-generation, 162-layer 3D flash memory technology. Marking the next milestone in the companies' 20-year joint-venture partnership, this is the companies' highest density and most advanced 3D flash memory technology to date, utilizing a wide range of technology and manufacturing innovations.

"Through our strong partnership that has spanned two decades, Kioxia and Western Digital have successfully created unrivaled capabilities in manufacturing and R&D," said Masaki Momodomi, Chief Technology Officer, Kioxia. "Together, we produce over 30 percent of the world's flash memory bits and are steadfast in our mission to provide exceptional capacity, performance and reliability at a compelling cost. We each deliver this value proposition across a range of data-centric applications from personal electronics to data centers as well as emerging applications enabled by 5G networks, artificial intelligence and autonomous systems."

PNY Announced today the availability of the new 1TB2 PRO Elite Class 10 U3 V30 SDXC Flash Memory Card (1 TB PRO Elite SDXC Card) delivering today's maximum capacity and UHS-I performance to professional photographers and enthusiasts of all levels. There is nothing more important in photography and videography than to be ready and well-equipped to capture life's most extreme adventures. PNY 1 TB PRO Elite SDXC Card offers impressive storage without compromising performance, allowing photographers and videographers to create new content seamlessly, whether shooting photos at 24MP and higher, or 4K videos which require constant data recording.

The 1 TB PRO Elite SDXC Card is rated Class 10, U3 and features V30 video speed allowing for 4K video recording. The sequential read and write speeds of up to 100 MB/s and up to 90 MB/s, respectively, ensure top UHS-I performance without the need for any special reader to achieve these speeds. These impressive specs culminate into one powerful storage device capable of holding up to 151,740 photos at 24MP or up to 21 hours of 4K video at 60 frames per second.

KIOXIA America, Inc. (formerly Toshiba Memory America, Inc.) today unveiled the PC OEM focused KIOXIA XG7/XG7-P Series, the company's first PCIe 4.0 client solid-state drive (SSD) series for notebooks, desktops, and workstations with qualification samples currently shipping to customers. Now spanning enterprise, data center, and client segments, KIOXIA's comprehensive PCIe 4.0 SSD portfolio addresses a wide array of applications, optimizing tomorrow's data, service and content-driven world.

Built for demanding PC environments, the XG7/XG7-P Series offers 2x the sequential read speed and approximately 1.6x the sequential write speed of the PCIe Gen3 based XG6 Series1, delivering a high performance, feature-rich storage experience for content creators, gamers and professionals. With leading capacity support up to 4096 gigabytes (GBs), the XG7-P Series SSDs enable power users to take advantage of PCIe Gen4 x4 lane bandwidth and ample storage space. Furthermore, this series deploys an all-new in-house controller vertically integrated with KIOXIA's BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory, ensuring next generation feature support such as the NVMe 1.4 specification and System Management Bus (SMBus) for improved system thermal management through a sideband channel.

Micron today announced that it has begun volume shipments of the world's first 176-layer 3D NAND flash memory, achieving unprecedented, industry-pioneering density and performance. Together, Micron's new 176-layer technology and advanced architecture represent a radical breakthrough, enabling immense gains in application performance across a range of storage use cases spanning data center, intelligent edge and mobile devices.

"Micron's 176-layer NAND sets a new bar for the industry, with a layer count that is almost 40% higher than our nearest competitor's," said Scott DeBoer, executive vice president of technology and products at Micron. "Combined with Micron's CMOS-under-array architecture, this technology sustains Micron's industry cost leadership."

Kioxia Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today announced it will begin construction of a state-of-the-art fabrication facility (Fab7) at Yokkaichi Plant in Mie Prefecture, Japan to expand production of its proprietary 3D Flash memory BiCS FLASH. The construction of Kioxia Corporation's Fab7 facility is expected to commence in the spring of 2021.

Due to technological innovation, the amount of data being generated, stored and used around the world has increased exponentially. Furthermore, the flash memory market expects further growth driven by cloud services, 5G, IoT, AI and automated driving. As a result, the production of cutting-edge products in Kioxia Corporation's Fab7 facility will continue to meet the increasing demand for memory around the world.

The Fab7 facility will be built on the north side of Yokkaichi Plant, where land development is underway. In order to secure optimal production of advanced flash memory products, the construction of Fab7 will be divided into two phases, with the first phase of construction scheduled to be completed by the spring of 2022. Kioxia plans to fund the capital investments for the construction of Fab7 from its operating cash flow.

The next generation of SAS has arrived, bringing improved performance, reliability and data protection along with it. Today, KIOXIA America, Inc. (formerly Toshiba Memory America, Inc.) became the first 1 company to bring 24G SAS to server and storage applications with the introduction of its 6 th generation enterprise SAS SSD family. First demonstrated at Flash Memory Summit 2019, KIOXIA's new PM6 Series of enterprise SAS SSDs is built on 24G SAS technology.

Designed for modern IT infrastructures, 24G SAS doubles the data throughput of its predecessor, while implementing new features and enhancements to reach new application performance levels. An established leader in developing SAS SSDs, KIOXIA delivers never before seen SAS SSD performance and is the only SSD supplier to offer protection and recovery from two simultaneous die failure s in an SSD. The PM6 Series builds upon this history of best in cl ass performance and reliability over six generations of SAS drives.

SSD controller manufacturer Phison Electronics announced that its entire lineup of controllers are compatible with 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips by Yangtze Memory Technology Company (YMTC), the Chinese semiconductor firm specializing in memory devices, which is in the news for rapid product portfolio development in aid of China's plans to reduce dependence on foreign technology.

The company also announced readiness for YMTC's upcoming 128-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips. Phison's controllers feature industry-standard NAND flash interfaces, and supporting YMTC's chips would be as simple as developing an optimized firmware. YMTC leapfrogged from 64- to 128-layer, skipping the 96-layer product cycle. YMTC's 64-layer chips have been in mass-production since September 2019, and 128-layer chips will start shipping out later this year. Phison's first collaboration with YMTC will be for client-segment products, before developing enterprise-grade drives.

Samsung Electronics is reportedly developing its 7th generation V-NAND memory with ultra-high 3D stacking technology. The first model will feature at least 160 layers, subsequent models will feature more. In early signs of the company not wanting to yield the technological initiative to China's YMTC, the first 160-layer V-NAND by Samsung is slated to come out roughly around the time YMTC's 128-layer 3D NAND flash hits mass production, towards the end of 2020.

At the heart of the ultra-high 3D stack is Samsung's proprietary Double Stack technology. The double-stack technology creates electron holes at two separate times for current to go through circuits. The current-generation single-stack chips creates these holes once throughout the stack per cycle. The 160-layer NAND flash is expected to herald a 67% increase in densities per package over the 96-layer chips in the market. Densities could also be increased by other means such as switching to newer semiconductor fabrication nodes, and PLC (5 bits per cell), which is currently being developed by KIOXIA.

Mainland Chinese semiconductor firm Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC) formally launched a product that could serve as a technological milestone for the company, a 128-layer 3D QLC NAND flash memory chip. Carrying the product naming series "X2-6070," the chip implements YMTC's XTracking 2.0 memory stacking architecture. This is a particularly big development for the company considering the chip's immediate predecessor is a 64-layer chip based on XTracking 1.0, which entered mass-production as recently as in September 2019, a time when most foreign firms such as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, had moved on to 96-layer mass-production, having announced their 128-layer designs around June 2019. YMTC hence appears to have pole-vaulted 96-layer.

"With the launch of Xtacking 2.0, YMTC is now capable of building a new business ecosystem where our partners can play to their strengths and we can achieve mutually beneficial results," said Grace Gong SVP of sales and marketing at YMTC. "This product will first be applied to consumer-grade solid-state drives and will eventually be extended into enterprise-class servers and data centers in order to meet the diverse data storage needs of the 5G and AI era," Gong added. YMTC, part of the state-owned conglomerate Tsinghua Unigroup, is one of the dozens of beneficiaries of the Chinese government's initiative of localizing cutting-edge electronics technology, and reducing reliance on foreign hardware.

Further cementing its position as a leading provider of storage for next-gen mobile devices, KIOXIA America, Inc. (formerly Toshiba Memory America, Inc.), the U.S.-based subsidiary of KIOXIA Corporation, today announced that it has started sampling Universal Flash Storage (UFS) Ver. 3.1 embedded flash memory devices. Well suited for mobile applications requiring high-performance with low power consumption, the new lineup utilizes KIOXIA's cutting-edge BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and is supported in four capacities: 128 gigabytes (GB), 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 terabyte (TB).

The new devices integrate BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory and a controller in a JEDEC-standard 11.5 x 13 mm package. The controller performs error correction, wear leveling, logical-to-physical address translation, and bad-block management for simplified system development. "KIOXIA was the first company to introduce UFS in 2013[4] and the first to offer UFS Ver. 3.0 last year and we continue to be at the forefront of UFS memory with this Ver. 3.1 announcement today," noted Scott Beekman, director of managed flash memory products for KIOXIA America, Inc. "Our newest offerings enable next-gen mobile devices to take full advantage of the connectivity benefits of 5G, leading to faster downloads and reduced lag time - and an improved user experience."

Kioxia Corporation today announced the development of the world's first three-dimensional (3D) semicircular split-gate flash memory cell structure "Twin BiCS FLASH" using specially designed semicircular Floating Gate (FG) cells. Twin BiCS FLASH achieves superior program slope and a larger program/erase window at a much smaller cell size compared to conventional circular Charge Trap (CT) cells. These attributes make this new cell design a promising candidate to surpass four bits per cell (QLC) for significantly higher memory density and fewer stacking layers. This technology was announced at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) held in San Francisco, CA on December 11th.

3D flash memory technology has achieved high bit density with low cost per bit by increasing the number of cell stacked layers as well as by implementing multilayer stack deposition and high aspect ratio etching. In recent years, as the number of cell layers exceeds 100, managing the trade-offs among etch profile control, size uniformity and productivity is becoming increasingly challenging. To overcome this problem, Kioxia developed a new semicircular cell design by splitting the gate electrode in the conventional circular cell to reduce cell size compared to the conventional circular cell, enabling higher-density memory at a lower number of cell layers.

As the industry's leading provider of SSD controllers and storage solutions, Goke Microelectronics was invited to the 2019 Flash Memory Summit to demonstrate an ultra-low latency NVMe SSD based on Toshiba Memory's XL-FLASH memory. One year ago, Toshiba Memory announced XL-FLASH at the 2018 Flash Memory Summit, promising to use ultra-low latency 3D SLC flash to reduce read latency to 5μs, which is equivalent to 1/10th of read latency of 3D TLC NAND.

Goke 2311-series drives are based on the 2311 SSD controller and are paired with Toshiba Memory's XL-FLASH memory. The prototype of 2311-series drives have implemented an overall 4K random read latency under 20μs and the final drives will offer a 4K random read latency in less than 15μs. Goke 2311-series drives support up to 4 TB capacity with a maximum write bandwidth of 1 GB/s and read bandwidth of 3 GB/s through a PCIe Gen 3 x4 interface. They will also support SM2/3/4 and SHA-256/AES-256 with built-in security engines.