Micron to move most of its NAND production to 3D NAND by Q2 2016

EE Times writes this may be the year that memory makers switch to 3D NAND production. The site reports that Micron is ramping up volume prodution of 3D NAND, the company expects most of its flash production will be of the 3D NAND sort by Q2 2016. The adoption of 3D NAND promises to deliver cheaper solid state disks with larger capacity than its planar predecessor.

Micron has begun volume production of 256Gb MLC and 384Gb TLC that can be stacked and put into an SSD. Kilbuck said Micron can get 3.5 TB into an m.2 form factor and 10 TB in a 2.5-inch form factor. He said Micron has made some architectural innovations to further reduce the cost of 3D NAND, noting that XY lithography is now becoming irrelevant. “3D NAND sets the clock back. We are able to relax the XY lithography. It's how high can you stack it."

One of the changes Micron was able to make was the ability to hide more than 75% of the CMOS logic under the array with its 32-tier 256Gb MLC/384Gb TLC 3D NAND products.