SK Hynix, 321-layer QLC NAND Mass Production... "Targeting AI Data Center Market"

[Financial News] SK Hynix announced on the 25th that it has completed the development of its 321-layer 2Tb (terabit) quad-level cell (QLC) NAND flash product and will begin mass production.
SK Hynix stated, "We have once again overcome technical limitations by implementing NAND with over 300 layers in QLC format for the first time in the world," and emphasized, "With this product, which has the highest density among existing NAND products, we will aggressively target the AI data center market starting in the first half of next year after obtaining global customer certification."
To maximize the cost competitiveness of this product, SK Hynix developed it with a capacity of 2Tb, doubling that of existing products. Generally, as NAND capacity increases, more information is stored in a single cell, and memory management becomes complex, leading to slower data processing speeds. To address performance degradation due to increased capacity, the company increased the number of planes, which are units of groups that can operate independently within NAND, from 4 to 6, allowing for more parallel operations.
As a result, this product achieved significantly improved performance compared to previous QLC products, with data transfer speeds 100% faster, write performance improved by up to 56%, and read performance improved by 18%. Data writing power efficiency also increased by more than 23%, securing competitiveness in fields such as AI data centers that require low power.
SK Hynix plans to first apply the 321-layer NAND to solid-state drives (SSD) for PCs, and then expand its application to enterprise SSDs (eSSD) for data centers and UFS products for smartphones. Furthermore, based on its proprietary packaging technology that stacks 32 NAND chips at once, the company aims to achieve twice the density of existing products and aggressively target the ultra-high capacity eSSD market for AI servers.
Jung Woo-pyo, Vice President of SK Hynix (in charge of NAND development), said, "With the start of mass production of this product, we have significantly strengthened our high-capacity product portfolio and secured price competitiveness," adding, "We will achieve greater leaps as a full-stack AI memory provider in line with the explosive growth in AI demand and the high-performance requirements of the data center market." 

soup@fnnews.com Lim Soo-bin Reporter