Samsung has started to ship 4th generation V-NAND from its new Pyeongtaek campus semiconductor fabrication line in South Korea.
Construction began at the Pyeongtaek fab, which is currently the largest single fab in the industry, in May 2015 and concluded last month. The new fab comes just three years after Samsung completed the Xi’an campus in China, and the company plans to construct a second fabrication line in Xi’an in the future, with several sites under review.
Samsung plans to leverage 64-layer NAND for traditional and emerging markets such as Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and automotive technologies. The company has yet to introduce new consumer or enterprise solid state drives (SSDs) with the new 4th generation NAND technology, but we suspect those products will come in the next few months. Samsung usually introduces new SSDs in Q3 or Q4 with limited availability before increasing supply by Q1 of the next year.
Samsung’s new 64-layer NAND comes just in time to help bring the NAND market out of the largest shortage in history. IMFT (Intel Micron Flash Technologies) and Flash Forward (Toshiba and Western Digital’s manufacturing joint venture) have also announced 64-layer NAND flash production in recent months with products now shipping. Fellow South Korean NAND manufacturer Sk Hynix today announced production of new 72-layer 3D technology.
