SanDisk's 43nm X4 NAND flash chips give 25% capacity increase "for free"
 

From the looks of it, 2010 is looking very promising for storage devices that rely on NAND Flash devices [read: almost all of them] - after five years of development, SanDisk announced that the company begun production shipments of flash memory cards based on evolutionary X4 NAND flash chips. Unlike the current MLC flash chips [multi-level cell] that pack two or three bits in a single cell, X4 packs four bits in a single cell.

A die shot of a single 64Gbit X4 NAND flash chip. Picture Credit: SanDisk CorporationFirst shipped products are two 8GB and two 16GB flash cards - SDHC and Memory Stick Pro Duo, featuring increased writing and reading speed when compared to previous generation. But the progress doesn't stop here - SanDisk and Toshiba already demonstrated the 3-bit MLC cell manufactured in 32nm process and the next step will be to bring 3-bit and 4-bit MLC NAND Flash in even more denser configuration, courtesy of afore mentioned 32nm process.

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