Toshiba Sees Samsung's Bet in 16 Gb NAND Flash

The demand for smaller portable components with higher storage capacity is only growing faster, and as soon as this year, miniature devices residing on keychains may be able to boast the storage capacity of what can now be described as "larger" iPod nanos.

Toshiba announced today it's on schedule to produce 16 Gb flash memory components, in a new 300 mm fabrication facility just completed as a joint project with flash competitor SanDisk. Mass production of 8 Gb flash memory at 1 GB capacity will begin this month, to keep up with #1 producer Samsung's introduction of 8 Gb components last July.

At this rate, both Toshiba and SanDisk will be ready to sample 16 Gb components in 2 GB capacity by April or May. By that time, their joint production may be just about even with that of Samsung, which announced 16 Gb development at 50 nm last September. The Toshiba/SanDisk joint venture was only capable of producing at 56 nm lithography on 300 mm wafers, but it was either that or choose not to meet Samsung on a nearly-even footing.

According to Toshiba, it's aiming for a write speed of 10 MB/sec, which is double the rate of Toshiba's parts to date.

Analysts commenting on today's news managed to confuse the issue today, telling Reuters and other sources that higher capacity and higher density NAND flash from Toshiba is in higher demand thanks to the introduction of the Apple iPhone. Actually, Samsung is Apple's NAND supplier, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future; what competitors like Toshiba have had to do is partner with SanDisk in order to leverage a collective 40% market share to appeal to Apple's competitors in the CE field.

Another key point the analysts missed today is that Toshiba itself needs smaller NAND components to fit in its subnotebook computer line, the demand for which may take off after consumers discover Windows Vista's built-in support for on-board flash as a high-speed memory and file cache.