back to article Future of storage: Micron bets chips on 3D NAND flash – but NOT YET

As far as the world's number two DRAM chip-maker is concerned, 2D or planar NAND can go through another lithography cycle before 3D techniques may become necessary because a two-year-old NAND design change has enabled Micron to scale its lithography down to 16nm and maybe beyond. El Reg interviewed Glen Hawk, Micron's VP for …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Remedial math

    "For example, Micron's M500 client SSD uses 20nm NAND and has capacities between 120GB and 960GB. We'd assess that this could simply double with 16nm parts, meaning a 240GB to 1.92TB range."

    Can someone indicate how 20nm to 16nm will enable a doubling of capacity for SSDs?

    1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
      Go

      Re: Remedial math

      The difference is 20% in each of two dimensions. Imagine a square of size 20cm, and another of 16cm, and you will see that the latter is not much over half the size of the former - 256 square cm vs 400 square cm. Thus, increase the size of the NAND chip by a very small amount, and you get twice the number of cells per chip.

      GJC

      1. nkm
        Headmaster

        Re: Remedial math

        You could fit 50x50=2500 20nm features into a μm^2, and 6.25x6.25=3906 16nm features. I make that 56% more, you'd need to drop to 14 to double the density of 20.

        If you're assuming that it's a true 3D stack then fair enough (125K v. 244k / μm^3), but that would imply you're reducing the die depth at the same time as feature size.

        Is that the case? I'm not a wafer expert.

  2. Nigel 11

    No ReRAM?

    Pity nothing asked about ReRAM (Memristors). When do they see it becoming a competitor with Flash? Are they planning to manufacture it? Etc.

  3. circuitguy

    heat issues

    Although the engineers have done good work here, I worry about hot spots that can create uneven expansion in 3d space. At this level, a few molecules breaking free can be problemic, especially if they are ionized from breaking away their lattice frame.

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