SK hynix kicks off mass production of industry’s highest 238-layer 4D NAND

SK hynix Inc.’s 238-layer 4D NAND Flash memory [Photo provided by SK hynix]

South Korea’s SK hynix Inc. Thursday announced it has started mass production of its 238-layer 4D NAND Flash memory, following the development in August and compatibility test with a global smartphone manufacturer is underway.

SK hynix said it has developed solution products for smartphones and client SSDs which are used as PC storage devices, adopting the 238-layer NAND technology, and moved into mass production last month. Given that the company secured world-class competitiveness in price, performance and quality for both 238-layer NAND and the previous generation 176-layer NAND, the company expects these products to drive earnings improvement in the second half of the year.

“We will continue to overcome NAND technology limitations and increase our competitiveness so that we can achieve a bigger turnaround than anyone else during the upcoming market rebound,” said Kim Jum-soo, head of S238 NAND at SK hynix.

The 238-layer product - the smallest NAND in size - has a 34 percent higher manufacturing efficiency compared to the previous generation of 176-layer, resulting in a significant improvement in cost competitiveness.

Besides, with a data-transfer speed of 2.4Gb per second, a 50 percent increase from the previous generation, and about 20 percent increase in read and write speed, the company is confident that it will be able to deliver an improved performance to the smartphone and PC customers using this technology.

Once the product compatibility test is completed, SK hynix will begin supplying the 238-layer NAND product for smartphones and expand the technology across its product portfolio such as PCIe 5.0 SSDs and high-capacity server SSDs going forward.