New Samsung Flash Chip Goes Big

New 16Gigabit NAND flash chip, Samsung says, could be set into a memory card with up to 15 others, creating 32 gigabytes of storage on one small card.

Samsung today upped the stakes in the flash memory chip market as it unveiled a 16Gigabit (Gb) NAND memory device. NAND is used commonly in memory cards which find their way into mobile devices.

Samsung said that the 16 Gb design was achieved by the industry’s first mass production use of 50-nanometer technology. The development of this flash memory will make it easier to store large data amounts on small portable devices. In an example Samsung provided, densities of up to 32 Gigabytes could be created on a single memory card by combing 16 NAND chips. This would equal out to approximately 680 hours of MP3 music or 32 hours of high resolution DVD quality movies.

Samsung expects to begin mass production of the flash memory chips in the second half of next year.

"Memory is opening a bold new world in consumer electronics," said Dr. Chang-Gyu Hwang, Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor business president and CEO, at a press conference in Seoul today. "With cards containing multiple 16Gb flash memory chips, you will be able to take your entire music and personal video libraries with you on one small portable device."