Toshiba stands on 2Xnm NAND platform with devices, SSDs, and hybrid storage

Last week, Toshiba’s president and CEO Norio Sasaki stood firmly upon a leading-edge NAND Flash technology platform as he discussed his company’s future plans for memory and storage development, as reported by Nikkei Business Publications’ Tech-On!. Sasaki said that Toshiba plans to move forward with 2Xnm Flash processing by this summer, having already achieved volume production of 32nm NAND Flash devices in March. Sasaki also announced that Toshiba will soon start construction of a fifth Flash-manufacturing plant, specifically geared for 2Xnm manufacturing, with completion scheduled for early next year. Perhaps just as significant, Sasaki said that Toshiba will offer these advanced 2Xnm Flash products as individual packaged chips, multi-chip devices, and incorporated into Toshiba-built SSDs. The company will be offering SLC (single-level cell) devices for performance-oriented applications and TLC (3-bit per cell) devices for capacity-centric applications such as memory cards and USB drives. As an HDD vendor, Toshiba is also eyeing the market for Flash-enhanced HDDs, which can provide performance nearly equal to that of SSDs at much lower cost. Flash-cached HDDs can cut a storage subsystem’s energy consumption “by about 80%” in data centers said Sasaki.