New 34nm NAND Process from Micron & Intel Leapfrogs the Competition

Micron today announced that it has taken the leadership position in NAND process technology, jumping from 50 nanometers to 34 nanometers. The company is delivering a 32 gigabit chip using the advanced process, which was jointly developed with Intel via their NAND flash manufacturing joint venture, IM Flash Technologies.

The chip, which is less than the size of a thumbnail, will cost-effectively enable high-density, solid-state storage in small form factor applications. To put it into perspective, a single 32 gigabit chip (which also equates to 4 gigabytes) could store more than 1,000 songs on a personal music player. The chip was also designed with solid state drives (SSDs) in mind, enabling more cost-effective SSDs and instantly doubling the current storage volume to capacities beyond 256 gigabytes in today’s 1.8-inch form factor devices.