Despite the Coronavirus pandemic, demand for NAND is still high and Samsung is using it to its advantage. The Korean manufacturer just announced that it is expanding its V-NAND production capacity so that it can meet demand from data centers and for mobile applications.
"The new investment reaffirms our commitment to sustain undisputed leadership in memory technologies, even in uncertain times," said Cheol Choi, executive VP of Memory Global Sales & Marketing at Samsung. "We will continue to serve the market with the most optimized solutions available, while contributing to growth of the overall IT industry and the economy in general.”
The expanded capacity will be located at Samsung's Line 2 plant in Pyeongtaek, Korea, with mass production scheduled to commence in the second half of 2021. The facility will manufacture Samsung's "Most advanced V-NAND memory," hinting at a future generation of Samsung's stacked NAND.
| July 2013 | 1st-generation (24-layer) 128Gb MLC V-NAND |
| Aug. 2013 | 1st-generation 128Gb MLC V-NAND 960GB SSD |
| Aug. 2014 | 2nd-generation (32-layer) 128Gb 3-bit V-NAND |
| Sept. 2014 | 2nd-generation V-NAND SSD |
| Aug. 2015 | 3rd-generation (48-layer) 256Gb 3-bit V-NAND |
| Sept. 2015 | 3rd-generation V-NAND SSD '850 EVO', '950 PRO' |
| Dec. 2016 | 4th-generation (64-layer) 256Gb 3-bit V-NAND |
| Jan. 2017 | 4th-generation V-NAND SSD |
| Jan. 2018 | 4th-generation 512Gb V-NAND 30.72TB SAS SSD |
| May 2018 | 5th-generation (9x-layer) 256Gb 3-bit V-NAND |
| June 2018 | 5th-generation V-NAND SSD |
| June 2019 | 6th-generation (1xx-layer) 256Gb 3-bit V-NAND |
| July 2019 | 6th-generation V-NAND SSD |
Last we heard, Samsung is advancing the development of 160-layer tall V-NAND, using a double-stack method to achieve such tall memory structures. It isn't clear when, but an announcement for Samsung's 7th Generation V-NAND appears to be imminent sometime in this summer -- if the pandemic hasn't delayed the timeline. Thus, with this new facility commencing production in 2H21, we suspect it will be building Samsung's future 8th-Gen V-NAND products.
