Toshiba and SanDisk plan 20nm NAND flash chips

TAIWAN'S RUMOUR MILL has churned out word that Toshiba and SanDisk plan to start knocking out NAND flash chips at 20nm.

Digitimes reports that orders have come down from Toshiba and SanDisk executives to start production in the second half of next year.

SanDisk and Toshiba's joint-venture manufacturing facilities in Yokkaichi in the Land of the Rising Sun is expected to ramp up its monthly capacity to around 200,000 wafers.

Toshiba has started mass production of 3-bit per cell (3bpc) 32nm devices and has said that it wants half of the total output from the Yokkaichi operations by the end of 2009.

But production increases have not gone entirely to plan because the ramp up was steeper than anticipated and might require a bit more effort to meet expectations.

Intel and Micron Technology want to introduce 2Xnm technology before Christmas. Mass production of their 32Gb NAND flash memory using 3bpc 34nm process technology is all set, apparently.

Samsung will be upgrading its 200mm wafer fab in Austin, Texas to a 300mm fab for producing more NAND flash chips from the second half of 2010. It currently produces NAND flash chips at 42nm.

When all this lot hits the shops SSDs should get somewhat cheaper and that could spark something of an uptick in demand for replacement of hard drives. µ