Kioxia Researchers Demo Hepta-Level Cell NAND Flash, Nearly Doubling the Capacity of QLC

Kioxia NAND researchers Successfully demonstrated A practical concept for a new storage architecture called hepta-level cell NAND flash. This new type of his NAND can accommodate up to 7 bits per cell, thus offering almost double the storage capacity of QLC NAND flash. If Kioxia can make this storage architecture room temperature stable, it could be the ultimate successor to spinning hard drives in consumer and enterprise applications.

To create hepta-level NAND flash, Kioxia uses a new design called New Silicon Process Technology, which is combined with cryogenic cooling to increase cell density. New silicon process technology will replace the current polysilicon material with single crystal silicon used in the channels within memory cell transistors. This obviously reduces the amount of read noise from NAND flash by up to two-thirds. In other words, the new silicon process technology is enough to generate a clearer read signal for reading data from NAND flash, increasing the bitcell capacity to 7.

Kioxia says the new storage architecture will also be significantly cheaper to manufacture, with solutions combining hepta-level flash and cryogenic cooling proposed. This is cheaper than current (air or passively cooled) SSDs on the market today.