Details of the latest 3D flash memory technology jointly developed by Kioxia and Western Digital (WD) have been revealed.

The two companies recently announced on the 30th (local time) that they have successfully launched the 8th generation NAND flash using advanced scaling and wafer bonding technology through an engineering partnership.

The 218-layer 3D NAND flash is characterized by 1Tb TLC and QLC and lateral shrink technology that increases bit density by more than 50%. It is expected to accelerate performance and usability by combining high-speed NAND I/O speeds of more than 3.2Gb per second, which is 60% higher than the previous generation, with improvements in write performance and read latency.

Kioxia and WD have introduced some unique processes and architectures to reduce costs and continue to advance horizontal scaling. It is designed to achieve greater capacity in a smaller die size with fewer layers at an optimized cost by finding a balance between vertical and horizontal scaling.

In addition, the company developed and applied CBA (CMOS direct Bonded to Array) technology, which is explained to provide improved bit density and fast NAND I/O speed by manufacturing each CMOS wafer and cell array wafer separately and then bonding them.

“Through our engineering partnership, we have successfully launched the 8th generation BiCS FLASH and have started sample shipments to some customers,” said Masaki Momodomi, Chief Technology Officer at Kioxia. “By applying our CBA technology and scalability, we have updated our portfolio of 3D flash memory technologies that can be used in a variety of data-centric applications, including smartphones, IoT, and data centers.”

“Our new 3D flash memory demonstrates the benefits of our strong partnership with Kioxia,” said Alper Ilkbahar, WD’s senior vice president of technology and strategy. “Our shared R&D roadmap and continued investment have enabled us to bring the technology to market ahead of schedule and deliver high-performance, cost-effective solutions.”