SK Hynix announces mass production of first 128-layer 1Tb TLC 4D NAND flash memory

SK Hynix announced that it will mass-produce the world's first 128-layer 1Tb (Terabit) TLC 4D NAND flash memory and plans to start sales in the second half of the year.

This is the first time SK Hynix has released a new product in eight months since it released the 96-layer 4D NAND in October last year. According to the Korean media Chosun Ilbo, SK Hynix has developed a new product using TLC design (3 bits installed on each Cell unit), and applied vertical etching, multi-layer thin film particle formation, low-power circuit design and other technologies to produce a 1Tb product with more than 360 billion NAND particles and 128 layers. It not only reaches the highest stacking number in the industry, but also surpasses the 90-layer NAND mass-produced by Samsung Electronics.

Although there have been 96-layer QLC 1Tb products before, TLC's performance and processing speed are better than QLC, and TLC products have a market share of 85% in the NAND market. Therefore, SK Hynix's first development of high-capacity NAND using TLC technology has attracted much attention from the outside world.

What is special is that although this product adds 32 layers to the original 96-layer NAND product, the process procedures are reduced by 5%. In addition, the bit productivity of 128-layer 4D NAND per silicon wafer is 40% higher than that of 96-layer 4D NAND. Even without using PUC technology (peripheral circuit), the bit productivity of 128-layer 4D NAND can still be increased by more than 15%. SK Hynix explained that this method can save the cost of converting to a new process, which can be reduced by about 60% compared with the investment cost of the previous generation conversion. The Chosun Ilbo pointed out that this is the result of SK Hynix's use of the 4D NAND process platform developed in October last year and optimizing the process.

SK Hynix plans to start selling 128-layer 4D NAND flash memory in the second half of the year. SK Hynix officials said that the product can achieve a data transmission speed of 1400Mbps even in a low voltage (1.2V) environment, and is suitable for use in high-performance, low-power mobile solutions and enterprise SSDs (solid-state drives).