Micron Technology Announces Mass Production Of 200+ Layer QLC NAND

Semiconductor manufacturing company Micron Technology Inc. announced that its 232-layer QLC NAND flash memory is now in mass production, and is being shipped to enterprise storage customers and sampled to original equipment PC manufacturers.

The 232-layer QLC NAND delivers improved performance for use cases across mobile, client, edge and data centre storage, according to Micron. It is more compact, making thin and light devices possible, and has a higher bit-density, with NAND I/O speeds of 2400 MT/s, a 50% improvement over the prior generation. It also offers better read and programming performance over the earlier generation, the company said in a press release.

Micron 2500 Client SSD integrates the 200+ layer QLC NAND to improve everyday computing and enhance the PC user experience. It has demonstrated superior PCMark 10 experience benchmark results, outperforming the average scores in the value SSD segment, the company said.

As the industry shifts to QLC-based storage, "we anticipate that the 2500 SSD will further accelerate QLC adoption in PCs as it delivers a world-class user experience and value proposition," said Prasad Alluri, vice president and general manager of Micron's Client Storage Group.

Micron said the 2500 SSD has up to 7.1 GB/s sequential read speeds, superior to TLC-based NAND and QLC-based NAND SSDs in the value segment. The accelerated caching feature enables faster read and write performance under various applications. The 232-layer QLC NAND enables even the smaller capacity 512GB SSD, to have endurance to support 13 4K movie downloads per day, every day for three years, the company said.

The 2500 SSD is available in 22 x 30mm, 22 x 42mm and 22 x 80mm form factors, in 512GB up to 2TB capacities, with the compact 2TB 22 x 30mm option good for handheld gaming devices. The single-sided design of these SSDs provides better flexibility for OEMs to integrate into systems that range from ultra-thin devices to workstations.