Kioxia and Western Digital Announce 218-layer 3D Flash NAND Memory

The 218-layer 3D flash memory leverages 1 Tb triple-level-cell (TLC) and quad-level-cell (QLC) with four planes and features innovative lateral shrink technology to increase bit density by over 50 percent.

Kioxia Corporation and Western Digital Corp. have jointly announced their latest 3D flash memory technology, which boasts exceptional capacity, performance, and reliability at a cost-effective price point. The cutting-edge technology is an outcome of their successful partnership and advanced scaling and wafer bonding techniques. The new 3D flash memory is designed to cater to the needs of the rapidly growing data market across a range of industries.

According to Alper Ilkbahar, Senior Vice President of Technology & Strategy at Western Digital, the companies' collaboration and investment in R&D have enabled them to productize this fundamental technology ahead of schedule and deliver high-performance and capital-efficient solutions. By introducing several unique processes and architectures, Kioxia and Western Digital have reduced costs, enabled continued lateral scaling advancements, and produced greater capacity in a smaller die with fewer layers at an optimized cost.

One of the groundbreaking innovations introduced by the companies is the CMOS directly Bonded to Array (CBA) technology. Each CMOS wafer and cell array wafer is manufactured separately in its optimized condition and then bonded together to deliver enhanced bit density and fast NAND I/O speed. This advanced engineering partnership has led to the successful launch of the eighth-generation BiCS FLASH, boasting the industry's highest bit density.

Its high-speed NAND I/O at over 3.2Gb/s, a 60 percent improvement over the previous generation, combined with a 20 percent write performance and read latency improvement, will accelerate overall performance and usability for users.

In conclusion, Kioxia and Western Digital's latest 3D flash memory technology is an exceptional solution for the exponential data growth in various markets. With its advanced features and cost-effectiveness, it is well-suited for use in data-centric applications such as smartphones, IoT devices, and data centers.