Kioxia has started sample shipments of 1 Tb triple-level cell (TLC) NAND devices built on its 10th-generation BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory technology. Kioxia says the parts are intended to be integrated primarily into its enterprise and data center SSDs, targeting AI storage demand where performance, capacity, and power all matter.

Kioxia plans to manufacture the new devices at Fab2 of its Kitakami Plant in Iwate Prefecture, Japan, using what it describes as state-of-the-art equipment. The company also notes the samples are for functional checking, and specifications may differ from mass production parts.

On the interface side, Kioxia lists a NAND interface speed of 4.8 Gb/s, which it calls a 33% improvement over its 8th-generation BiCS FLASH. (Kioxia notes the 4.8 Gb/s figure is measured in a specific test environment and can vary with use conditions.) For density scaling, the company credits 332-layer stacking plus improved lateral density for a 59% increase in bit density.

Power is the other headline metric. Kioxia reports write and read power efficiencies improved by 18% and 30%, respectively, and notes that these figures include power efficiency during data transfer. For operators trying to balance performance-per-watt with rack-level thermal limits, NAND-side efficiency gains can translate into a little more headroom at the SSD and server level, even if total platform power is dominated by CPUs, GPUs, and networking.

Technically, Kioxia attributes the 10th-generation BiCS FLASH improvements to CMOS directly Bonded to Array (CBA) and On-Pitch Select Gate Drain (OPS), technologies it says have been adopted since its 8th-generation BiCS FLASH. Kioxia describes CBA as manufacturing the CMOS wafer and cell array wafer separately under optimized conditions and then bonding them together. It describes OPS as shortening the bit line and reducing word line capacitance by removing unused memory holes.

Kioxia also outlined what it calls a dual-axis approach: a 9th-generation line aimed at “high performance at relatively low cost of investing,” alongside its 10th-generation technology focused on advanced layer stacking for higher capacity and performance.

Source: Kioxia