Samsung ships first 3D vertical NAND flash, defies memory scaling limits

Samsung ships first 3D vertical NAND flash, defies memory scaling limits

Samsung Starts Mass Producing Industry's First 3D Vertical NAND Flash
Represents a breakthrough in overcoming NAND scaling limit; ushers in new 3D memory era
SEOUL, South Korea--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing the industry's first three-dimensional (3D) Vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory, which breaks through the current scaling limit for existing NAND flash technology. Achieving gains in performance and area ratio, the new 3D V-NAND will be used for a wide range of consumer electronics and enterprise applications, including embedded NAND storage and solid state drives (SSDs).
"Following the world's first mass production of 3D Vertical NAND, we will continue to introduce 3D V-NAND products with improved performance and higher density, which will contribute to further growth of the global memory industry."
Samsung's new V-NAND offers a 128 gigabit (Gb) density in a single chip, utilizing the company's proprietary vertical cell structure based on 3D Charge Trap Flash (CTF) technology and vertical interconnect process technology to link the 3D cell array. By applying both of these technologies, Samsung's 3D V-NAND is able to provide over twice the scaling of 20nm-class* planar NAND flash.

"The new 3D V-NAND flash technology is the result of our employees' years of efforts to push beyond conventional ways of thinking and pursue much more innovative approaches in overcoming limitations in the design of memory semiconductor technology," said Jeong-Hyuk Choi, senior vice president, flash product & technology, Samsung Electronics. "Following the world's first mass production of 3D Vertical NAND, we will continue to introduce 3D V-NAND products with improved performance and higher density, which will contribute to further growth of the global memory industry."

For the past 40 years, conventional flash memory has been based on planar structures that make use of floating gates. As manufacturing process technology has proceeded to the 10nm-class* and beyond, concern for a scaling limit arose, due to the cell-to-cell interference that causes a trade-off in the reliability of NAND flash products. This also led to added development time and costs.
Samsung's new V-NAND solves such technical challenges by achieving new levels of innovation in circuits, structure and the manufacturing process through which a vertical stacking of planar cell layers for a new 3D structure has been successfully developed. To do this, Samsung revamped its CTF architecture, which was first developed in 2006. In Samsung's CTF-based NAND flash architecture, an electric charge is temporarily placed in a holding chamber of the non-conductive layer of flash that is composed of silicon nitride (SiN), instead of using a floating gate to prevent interference between neighboring cells.

By making this CTF layer three-dimensional, the reliability and speed of the NAND memory have improved sharply. The new 3D V-NAND shows not only an increase of a minimum of 2X to a maximum 10X higher reliability, but also twice the write performance over conventional 10nm-class floating gate NAND flash memory.

Also, one of the most important technological achievements of the new Samsung V-NAND is that the company's proprietary vertical interconnect process technology can stack as many as 24 cell layers vertically, using special etching technology that connects the layers electronically by punching holes from the highest layer to the bottom. With the new vertical structure, Samsung can enable higher density NAND flash memory products by increasing the 3D cell layers without having to continue planar scaling, which has become incredibly difficult to achieve.

After nearly 10 years of research on 3D Vertical NAND, Samsung now has more than 300 patent-pending 3D memory technologies worldwide. With the industry's first completely functional 3D Vertical NAND memory, Samsung has strengthened its competitiveness in the memory industry as well as set the foundation for more advanced products including one terabit (Tb) NAND flash, while setting a faster pace for industry growth.

According to IHS iSuppli, the global NAND flash memory market is expected to reach approximately US $30.8 billion in revenues by the end of 2016, from approximately US $23.6 billion in 2013 with a CAGR of 11 percent, in leading growth of the entire memory industry.

Read More

Apple iOS 7 Bata 4 with BiometricKitUI

Apple appears to be prepping its next-generation iPhone with a fingerprint sensor.
Developer Hamza Sood tweeted the news on Monday, revealing that iOS 7 beta 4 includes a fingerprint sensor on the home button.

Sood posted a screenshot of the new "BiometricKitUI" folder (below), which contains code meant for users who've enabled iOS VoiceOver. The text inside indicates that a biometric sensor will be embedded into the phone's Home button.

According to an unnamed 9to5Mac source, the user interface for the fingerprint scanning system is complete; the technology is reportedly intended to help unlock the phone. It is unclear, however, whether the function will also be used for a rumored Apple payment system or be integrated into Passbook or other built-in apps.


Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Don't ditch your Android phone just yet — not all beta features make it to the final product, which will be released this fall.
Cupertino unveiled iOS 7 during last month's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), calling it "the biggest change to iOS since the iPhone." New details include flatter icons, a lock-screen-accessible notification center, and multi-tasking for all apps, among other updates to Siri, the camera, and iTunes.
Previous beta versions of iOS 7 have included iPad support and message upgrades.
Apple remains tight-lipped about upcoming hardware. However, an image floating around Chinese websites suggests the rumored low-cost iPhone might be known as the iPhone 5C. A labor report out of China yesterday, meanwhile, also tipped a cheaper iPhone.
These rumors come amidst reports that Apple is conducting in-house testing of larger iPhone and iPad screens, as well as the possibility of an iPhone launch delay due to the switch to a larger phone display.



Source: PC  MAG

Read More

Superman memory crystal: 5D nano-glass

Superman memory crystal: 5D nano-glass

to preserve data for million years.

A research group in Britain has recorded data into a crystal of nanostructured glass. This future storage with practically unlimited lifetime and capacity exceeding Blu-Ray’s by 2,800 times might save civilization’s data for aliens if humankind is gone.
A group of scientists from University of Southampton has developed a ‘five-dimensional’ optical memory, having experimentally proven a possibility of recording data into nanostructured glass using a high speed (femtosecond) laser, which creates self-assembled nanostructures in fused quartz.

The creators of 5D memory has dubbed their invention ‘Superman memory crystal’, following the ‘memory crystals’ used in a number of movies featuring the superhero.

The method is called 5D because in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructures their refraction and polarization characteristics work as two additional parameters.

The newly-developed storage promises unprecedented data capacity of 360 Terabyte for a DVD-sized disc. The maximum capacity of a latest generation quad-layer Blu-Ray DVD is “only” 128 Gigabytes. The largest heat-assisted magnetic recording hard drive (HAMR), yet to be commercially produced, will have about 20 terabytes per disc.

Glass storage could preserve data for millions of years whereas a DVD guarantees only about seven years of faultless playback.

The nanostructured glass remains stable if exposed to temperatures up to 1,000°C.

“We are developing a very stable and safe form of portable memory using glass, which could be highly useful for organizations with big archives. At the moment companies have to back up their archives every five to ten years because hard-drive memory has a relatively short lifespan,” said the head of the project Jingyu Zhang, pointing out that museums and national archives with their huge numbers of documents are going to be the first to benefit.
A joint project of University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) and Eindhoven University of Technology has presented ‘5D Data Storage by Ultrafast Laser Nanostructuring in Glass’ report at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO’13) in San Jose, California.
The ORC’s physical optoelectronics group supervisor Prof. Peter G. Kazansky, follower of the Nobel Prize laureate for the invention of laser, Aleksandr Prokhorov, shared that “It is thrilling to think that we have created the first document which will likely survive the human race. This technology can secure the last evidence of civilization: all we’ve learnt will not be forgotten.”

 Source:http://rt.com/news/5d-nanostructured-glass-optical-memory-941/

Read More