Flash memory is getting faster, but not more reliable.

Yesterday, Intel and Micron announced the start of mass production of the world's first dual-bit (MLC) flash memory chips with a capacity of 128 Gbit using the standards of the 20-nm process technology.

128 Gbps chips will be sold in modules of eight pieces in a compact form factor of 128 gigabytes. Flash cards will be available in the second half of 2012, and SSD disks of eight and sixteen modules (1-2 TB) - somewhere in the beginning of 2013.

Although 128-gigabit chips were released before, but the transition to a new 20nm process technology means lower prices, more compact dimensions and less power consumption. In particular, such flash modules are 30% smaller in size than modules of similar capacity available on the market now, manufactured according to the 25 nm process technology.
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But most importantly, the new flash cards will support the standard ONFI 3.0 and the bus at a frequency of 333 million transmissions per second (MT / s). Such performance is especially important for SSD, because there the bottleneck is often the interface between the SSD controller and the flash memory itself, and now this interface will be able to increase, for example, the sequential read speed exactly twice compared to the fastest modern SSD - disks (in the 25 nm fabricated by the technical process the frequency is 166 MT / s).

True, experts from AnandTech are upset that because of the increase in the memory page size from 8 KB to 16 KB, new controllers will have to be developed, so we will not see faster SSD disks soon, probably not earlier than 2013.

Interestingly, flash cards on NAND-modules of 64 Gbps (20 nm) each have not yet appeared on the market, they were announced in April and will be made only in January 2012. But they will be on the old ONFI 2.x bus (200 MT / s).

Unfortunately, with the transition to a new technical process, the reliability of flash memory remains approximately at the same level: about 3000-5000 write cycles for each cell. But with the miniaturization of production prices for flash drives will soon fall below the dollar per gigabyte.