Abstract
NAND flash memories have historically doubled densities every year with each
new technology generation. This trend has been referred to "Hwang' s Law",
named after Hwang Chang-gyu, former President of Samsung Semiconductor who
first coined the term. As NAND flash memory encounters scaling challenges, it
is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain Hwang' s Law as chip sizes
increase beyond 200mm2. SLC (Single-Level-Cell) and MLC (Multi-Level-Cell) or
2-bit per cell technologies are the current mainstream technologies. NAND
flash manufacturers are adopting 3-bit per cell and 4-bit per cell
technologies to reduce chip sizes and correspondingly, costs. Three-bit per
cell and 4-bit per cell NAND flash memory technologies are expected to garner
the majority of the market in four years. NAND Flash Memory Chip Size Trend
provides actual and estimated NAND flash memory chip sizes and roadmaps for
SLC, MLC, 3-bit per cell and 4-bit per cell technologies by density, process
technology generation and vendor. The report covers NAND flash memory product
densities from 512Mb to 64Gb for Intel-Micron Flash Technologies,
Numonyx/Hynix, Samsung and SanDisk/Toshiba.
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