SanDisk Announces Production of 19nm NAND Flash Memory

SanDisk announced that it has started production of a 19nm new process NAND flash memory chip at the end of last year, and has high hopes for the better performance and lower cost that this process can bring.

SanDisk CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told analysts during the financial conference: “We started the production of 19nm technology (NAND flash memory chips) in the fourth quarter of 2011 and will be in full production in 2012.”

He also emphasized the difficulties faced by the new technology, that is, the increasing difficulty of technology and the contribution to cost saving is not so great: “As we explained before, the NAND flash memory technology is becoming more and more complicated, and the technology conversion will bring The cost savings are getting smaller and smaller. The cost reduction that 19nm can generate will be less than 24nm."

According to reports, SanDisk is using 19nm process to manufacture 2bpc MLC NAND, 3bpc TLC NAND flash memory chips. The specific yield rate has not been disclosed, but only that SanDisk’s capacity capacity is increasing as expected.

Sanjay Mehrotra also acknowledged that TLC NAND flash is currently not suitable for business-critical enterprise applications, but is more suitable for consumer-grade SSDs. This also coincides with OCZ's view.

He said: "We will look for the opportunity to use 3bpc on consumer-grade solid-state hard drives. On corporate solid-state drives, I think it will still be completely 2bpc. After all, enterprise applications require high performance and high reliability."

SanDisk’s revenue for the fourth quarter of 2011 was US$1.577 billion (according to GAAP), gross profit was US$662 million, operating profit was US$416 million, an increase of 18.8%, 14.9%, and 16.5% year-on-year; annual revenue was US$5.662 billion, gross profit was 2.439 billion In U.S. dollars, operating profit was 1.53 billion U.S. dollars, up 17.3%, 7.8%, and 4.7% year-on-year respectively.