Samsung announced to have started mass production of Flash NAND MLC chips featuring 3 bits per cell and engraved at 30 nm. The availability of 3 bit instead of 2 on the current MLC doubles the density of chips by 50%. The thinner engraving will offer identical storage capacity in smaller format, or larger space for identical current format.
This card will initially be dedicated to the production of 8 GB micro SD cards, before finding its way in USB keys. For SSD, one will need to wait, as this 3-bit memory will be slower and offer less operations per second than the current chips used in SSDs.
