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Intel and Micron announce 128 gigabit NAND flash, expect a 128 GB iPhone in 2013

Categories: Hottest Hardware
By: , IntoMobile
Tuesday, December 6th, 2011 at 9:24 PM
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Intel and Micron have just announced an industry first. Together they’ve created a 128 gigabit NAND chip made using a 20 nanometer process. What exactly does that mean? The memory technology used in smartphones, tablets, and solid state hard drives, and we’re talking about storage here, not random access memory or RAM, depends on NAND chips. Until today the largest NAND chip on the market could store just 64 gigabits of data, better known as 8 gigabytes. Manufactures typically stack NAND chips on top of each other to get additional storage. Intel says that you’ll be able to stack 8 of these 128 gigabit chips, thereby giving you 128 GB of storage. They also say that mass production of these high capacity NAND chips will begin during the first half of 2012, though we’ll likely have to wait until 2013 to actually see them in devices.

Besides capacity though, Intel’s new NAND chips are also fast. The Open NAND Flash Interface Working Group, or ONFi, sets the standards that all NAND chips use so that the industry can easily interchange parts. Version 2.0 of the ONFi spec, which just about everything on the market today uses, has a maximum speed limit of 200 megatransfers per second (MT/s). These new 128 Gb chips use ONFi version 3.0, which bumps that up to 333 MT/s. What exactly does that mean? According to AnandTech:

“This has a direct impact on sequential read performance for example, as most of those operations tend to be interface bound. Note that when I’m talking about interface speed I’m referring to the maximum speed allowed between the SSD controller and the NAND itself (e.g. an 8-channel ONFI 3 controller would have 8 x 333MT/s interfaces to NAND).”

We’re pretty confident in saying that Apple’s going to finally introduce a flash based device, be it an iPod touch, iPad, or even iPhone, with more than 100 GB of storage at some point in 2013. This year they introduced the 64 GB iPhone, and the 64 GB iPod touch is now 2 years old, so it makes sense.

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

  • Anonymous

    Wrong 128 Gb = 16 GB

  • Marslane61

    128 Gb = 16 GB stack 8 and you get 128 GB

  • Anonymous

    Yep…well I see that the original article has been edited and corrected because originally it had no reference to stacking of 8 chips.

  • http://twitter.com/jerenyun Josh Hrach

    If you can get 128 GB of Flash storage into a handheld device, we’re very close to the iPod Classic losing its internal hard drive. Of course, once the iPod Touch has 128+ GB of storage, I wouldn’t be surprised if the iPod Classics were phased out completely.

  • http://www.intomobile.com/ Stefan Constantinescu

    Nope, I made sure to mention the stacking all along. You just read wayyy too fast. Don’t blame me for that, I did my homework.