/ Asahi/Guangzhou, Aug 09, 2022 -- Toshiba's Fujio Masuoka first proposed the concept of flash memory in 1984. In 1987, Toshiba invented NAND flash memory. In 2019, the original Toshiba memory was renamed Kaixia. Kaixia Flash market share has occupied the second place in the world for many years. Compared with memory, flash memory has the advantage of being non-volatile. Data will not be lost after power failure and can be stored for a long time, which has changed the entire storage industry.
This year, is the 35th anniversary of Kaixia's invention of flash memory, on this occasion, Hot Topic Technology had the honor to interview Kaixia Electronics (China) Co., LTD. Chairman and general manager Mr. Okamoto Nariyuki, in view of the development of flash memory, the change of the name Kaixia and the sixth generation of BiCS NAND flash products when to market, the future development of QLC and other aspects of questions.
< p> In 1984, Fujio Masuoka, an engineer at Toshiba's ULSI research Institute, presented the concept of flash memory at the IEDM conference. It took just over a decade. Flash memory in the form of CF, MMC, PCMCIA to achieve large-scale popularity, Mr. Okamoto said: "The reason why flash memory has achieved such rapid development is derived from the 10 years after the invention of flash memory, Kaixia's unremitting research and development technology results, by promoting large capacity, reduce the cost per bit, so as to constantly expand the digital camera, smart phone, PC, data center and other markets."
At the same time, Mr. Okamoto also revealed that, "In this development process, Kai Xia has developed technologies that can realize large capacity, namely, fine technology, multi-valued technology, three-dimensional technology. As a professional flash memory manufacturer, Kaixia also continues to further promote the research and development of technology. When the mass capacity of 2-dimensional NAND is about to meet the physical boundary, it develops 3-dimensional flash memory with great technical challenges."
New brand invigorating and enriching SSD product line
When we mentioned what has changed since October 2019 when the original Toshiba memory was officially renamed Kai Xia, Mr. Okamoto replied: "In addition to the brand name change, Kaixia brand color also took on a new look, including light blue, rose red, yellow, light gray, light green, orange and other bright colors, applied to the product packaging and label design, giving people an exciting feeling." Kaixia owns a rich consumer product line of SSD, PSSD, memory card, U disk and so on, covering computer, video, mobile storage and other usage scenarios.
Mr. Okamoto also said, "Kaixia began selling SSD products in 2020 and added mobile solid-state drives in 2021 to further enrich the SSD product line. In order to improve Kaixia brand awareness, Kaixia has also carried out a variety of marketing activities, including participating in the industry and ChinaJoy exhibitions, and establishing an official account on the media platform to invite many talents to experience the product."In terms of enterprise storage products, since last year, PCIe 5.0 has become the focus of the industry, and even the consumer mainboard chipset Z690 provides PCIe 5.0 bus. Under this background, Kaixia Reaction very quickly launched the industry's first PCIe 5.0 technology EDSFF solid state drive. Therefore, Kai Xia how to layout enterprise market is a very interesting problem.
Mr. Naruyuki Okamoto said: "In order to meet the new requirements of end customers for enterprise and data center level products, Kaixia is also strengthening its SSD product line planning. The products mentioned in [Kaixia CD7 E3.S series] published in 2021 adopt PCIe5.0 interface. "We also use the advantages of flash memory to achieve EDSFF dimensions that are higher in density than HDDS, which will help us build high-performance, high-density and efficient systems."
The launch of Kaixin CD7 E3.S series gets rid of the traditional 2.5-inch SSD shape on the server, improves the performance and provides a new shape choice for enterprise servers and other data storage, takes the lead in the transition to the new standard, and can cope with the future data center architecture.
BiCS6 electronic products will be launched next year and strive to optimize product performance
We know that the more layers of NAND chip, the more storage density. Not long ago, Kaixia and Western Digital jointly developed the sixth generation of BiCS NAND flash memory, once reached 162 layers. How soon can consumers buy the sixth generation of BiCS NAND flash? "The first phase of the seventh building of the Yokkaichi plant, which will produce BiCS6, was completed in April. We have started to move manufacturing facilities and build production lines. Electronic products based on BiCS6 will be launched in 2023," Okamoto said.
On competitors' 172-layer or even 192-layer flash memory, and how competitive Kaixia sixth-generation BiCS NAND flash memory will be against these competitors, Mr. Okamoto said: "The more layers, the higher the density of flash memory, which makes manufacturing very difficult. In order to improve the density, in addition to the deposition technology of increasing the number of layers, Kaixia also combines the plane direction of high-density, super multivalue (QLC, PLC), CUA(Circuit under array) technology and other new structural technologies to improve the density and reduce the manufacturing cost. Compared with its competitors' products of the same generation, Kaixia's sixth-generation BiCS NAND flash technology has fewer layers, but through various technology combinations, we strive to achieve the optimal product performance, so Kaixia products are also very competitive."
The future QLC market will expand slowly but the TLC market will not disappear
After entering the SSD era, with MLC replacing SLC and TLC replacing MLC, will QLC replace TCL to occupy the mainstream market in the future? Mr. Okamoto expressed his opinion: "We see an expanding market for high volume products that require QLCS, and further acceleration in the replacement of high capacity HDDS by QLC-equipped SSDS. However, due to the variety of devices that use flash memory, TLC products are still needed for the capacity and performance of some memory devices, and the performance will be better. So the QLC market is going to grow slowly."
< /p>As the founder of flash memory, Kaixia has brought a series of memory solutions for the industry and consumers with its technological advantages and years of research and development experience. It has been widely used in such fields as smart phones, tablets and laptops, automotive infotainment systems, games, wearable devices, data centers, music and so on. It is closely related to our lives, and has changed our lives and the world.
