SanDisk Plans To Produce 'X4' Flash Chips With Toshiba

Probably, tired of making 16GB and 32GB flash chips, at a San Francisco technology conference, Sandisk announced about its an ambitious plan to start manufacturing high-end memory chips. Such memory chips would have a capacity of 64GB and be based on X4 technology.

Thus in each memory cell, we can be allowed to pack four bits of data, unlike the modern chips which can contain no more than two bits of data in a memory cell.

This was confirmed by the senior vice president of SanDisk, Khandker Quader. When contacted, he said, "It is a 64-gigabit single die (chip), which is 8GB (per die), the highest capacity point in the industry."

The making of these generation next flash chips will be done with an strategic business alliance with another technology giant Toshiba. They are planning to use 43-nanometer manufacturing process technology while the making of these X4' Flash Chips.

Apart from having a capacity to store fourfold data, this chip is also equipped to control the movement of data too. The company calls this technology “X4 controller.” These controllers boost the performance of a chip when the density of the chips increases.

Though the 'X4' Flash Chip is a joint venture of SanDisk and Toshiba, according to Khandker Quader, the “X4 controller technology is solely owned by SanDisk.” He also emphasizes that these chips "will be sold as an integrated solution." Thanks to their increased memory and “controller” feature.

These X4 flash chips, capable of transferring data at the speed of 7.8 megabytes per second, will hit the market shelves around the second quarter this year.