Ahead of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix

Micron's 176-layer NAND flash product

Micron, a U.S. memory semiconductor company that ranks sixth in the global NAND flash industry, has unveiled the world's first 176-layer NAND product ahead of the industry’s front-runner, Samsung Electronics.

Micron recently announced that it has started volume shipments of 176-layer NAND flashes to its customers. A 176-layer product has 176 layers of cells stacked vertically. With Micron's announcement, semiconductor companies are expected to compete more fiercely in cell-stacking technology.

The higher the number of layers is, the more capacity a NAND flash can have. As such, increasing the number of layers is, along with yield, a measure of technological prowess. According to Micron, a 176-layer product is 30 percent smaller and 35 percent faster than a 96-layer NAND flash, the current market mainstay.

It was Samsung Electronics that set off the vertical stacking technology competition. Although cells were originally arranged in a single layer, multiple layers became common when Samsung Electronics introduced a 24-layer 3D NAND flash for the first time in 2013. Vertical stacking quickly became a standard in the semiconductor industry as it is advantageous to minimize interferences between cells that increase with the use of micro-fabrication processes. Demand for high-capacity NAND flashes is on the uptick as data processing volume has grown recently.


Samsung Electronics and SK hynix were ahead of the competition in the development and volume production of a 128-layer NAND flash. SK hynix succeeded in mass-producing 128-layer 4D NAND flashes for the first time in the world in June 2019. A 4D NAND flash is a product that boosts space efficiency by using peri under cell (PUC) technology, which refers to the relocation of peripheral circuits to the bottom of the cell.

"For the first time in the world, we mass-produced PC SSDs based on 6th-generation V-NAND flashes and supplied them to global PC makers," said Samsung Electronics in August last year. Industry insiders estimate that Samsung Electronics’ 6th-generation products have 128 layers, the same as SK hynix’s 4D NAND product.

Against this backdrop, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are expected to step up their technological development as Micron came up with a 176-layer product. Samsung Electronics is planning to mass-produce 7th generation V-NAND flashes with 170 or more layers during the first half of 2021. Industry observers say that the release of this product has been delayed because Samsung Electronics changed its stacking method. SK hynix is also planning to introduce a 176-layer 4D NAND flash sometime in the first half of 2021.

Competitions among NAND flash makers will heat up in the future. The landscape of the NAND flash market is different from that of the DRAM market where Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and Micron are top three solid leaders. The market share gap among the five companies ranked second to sixth is only 7.1 percentage points. China's YMTC and other latecomers also announced that they will mass-produce 128-layer NAND flashes within 2020.

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