SEOUL, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's memory chip giant SK hynix said Thursday that it started to mass-produce the world's first triple-level cell (TLC) 321-high 4D NAND Flash memory chip with one terabyte (TB) capacity.
The chipmaker noted that it became the world's first supplier of the NAND with more than 300 layers by finding a technological breakthrough for stacking, planning to provide the 321-high products to customers from the first half of next year.
The NAND Flash products are categorized into single-, multi-, triple-, quadruple- and penta-level cells, depending on the amount of information in the format of bit unit that is stored in a cell.
To stack more than 300 layers, SK hynix adopted the three plugs process technology that electrically connects three plugs through an optimized follow-up process after three times of plug processes are finished.
Plug refers to a vertical hole through layers of substrates aimed at creating cells at once.
The South Korean company also developed a low-stress material to prevent wafer warpage by changing the material into the plugs, while introducing a technology that automatically corrects alignments among the plugs.
Compared with the previous generation, the 321-high product improved data transfer speed by 12 percent, reading performance by 13 percent and data reading power efficiency by more than 10 percent. ■
