Lexar Incorporates Micron's New 34nm NAND Chips

Micron Technology announced the mass production of new NAND flash memory products using a 34-nanometer process technology. In coordination with the announcement, Lexar, a subsidiary of Micron, announced plans to take advantage of the new 34nm NAND products by offering a range of flash memory cards and USB flash drives that use the technology.

Micron’s newly architected 32Gb multi-level cell (MLC) NAND chip is 17% smaller than the company’s first-generation 32Gb chip. Micron plans to offer 16- and 32-Gb NAND chips. The 16Gb MLC NAND provides lots of storage in a tiny package that’s just 84mm. Both of Micron’s new products feature an interface that delivers transfer speeds up to 200MBps. By comparison, traditional SLC NAND is significantly slower at 40MBps.


Micron 16Gb MLC NAND chip

“Our industry-leading NAND products are opening new possibilities for some of the world’s most popular consumer electronic devices,” said Brian Shirley, vice president of Micron’s memory group. “With our new 16- and 32Gb NAND chips in mass production, we are enabling customers to design cost-effective, high-capacity storage in their small-form factor products, using less space and fewer die. In addition, the high-speed interface is ideal in the industry’s quest to continue to increase throughput performance for SSDs.”



Consumers will see Micron’s high-capacity 34nm technology in Lexar’s new Platinum II 32GB SDHC card and the 16GB microSDHC mobile memory card. The 32GB Lexar Platinum II SDHC card can store up to 12 hours of HD video or more than 20,000 5-megapixel images. This card is speed-rated at 60x (Class 4) and offers a minimum-sustained write speed of 9MBps. For fast transfers of images from the card to a computer, the Platinum II 32GB SDHC supports a minimum-sustained read speed of 12MBps.



By the end of September, Lexar plans to use Micron’s 34nm NAND in a wide range of SD, SDHC, microSD, microSDHC, CF, Memory Stick Micro (M2), and Memory Stick PRO Duo cards. In addition, Lexar plans to use the technology in its USB flash drives including the JumpDrive Retrax, JumpDrive TwistTurn, JumpDrive FireFly, and JumpDrive Secure II Plus.