V-NAND
More info
- Creator
- Samsung
- Released
- 2013
- Type
- 3D NAND flash
Samsung's answer when flash cells could no longer be shrunk sideways: build upward instead.
By the early 2010s, planar NAND flash was hitting a wall — cells sat so close together that they interfered with one another and reliability fell. Samsung responded in 2013 with V-NAND ("vertical NAND"), the first 3D NAND in mass production: instead of shrinking the cells further, you stack them vertically, from a few dozen layers to well over 200 today.
The technology also switched storage mechanism, from a floating gate to charge-trap flash (CTF), which tolerates the stacking better. The result is denser, cheaper and more durable flash — the engine of modern SSDs. Every NAND maker followed suit, but Samsung got there first and still keeps its layer count high.