Sandisk to unveil 64Gb X4 flash

SANDISK WILL begin volume production of 64 gigabit SD flash memory chips within the first half of this year.

The flash making firm is set to make the official announcement later today alongside partner, Toshiba, at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco.

The new chips will be made with Sandisk's X4 technology, which it picked up after buying M-Systems in 2006. X4 allows four bits of data to be crammed into each memory cell instead of just one or two.

The 64 gigabit memory chips, which will be popped out on 43nm process technology, will be twice as big as the current largest on the market and the memory tech involved has been co-developed by both Sandisk and Tosh who also both co-own it.

In addition to the memory chip itself, the die too will feature an X4 controller, bunged in for good measure to manage data flow. The X4 controller technology, however, is owned by Sandisk alone.

Sandisk will try to get the chips to market as soon as possible in the first half of 2009, in an attempt to save its street cred, with the firm already playing serious catch up with its rivals – Samsung, Toshiba, Micron Technology and Intel – in the solid-state drive market.

At CES back in January, Sandisk said it was well on its way to delivering a 240GB SSD by mid 2009. µ

L'Inq
CNET