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  • jjj - Thursday, January 21, 2016 - link

    Toshiba/Sandisk are starting with TLC and you mention MLC support for 3D so assuming that's why they are missing. Guess 3 bit and 4 bit support will come in the next years.
  • jjj - Thursday, January 28, 2016 - link

    Sandisk reported Q4 and if you look at the prepared remarks pdf there are some very interesting bits.
    "Turning to 3D NAND, we shipped initial quantities of retail products manufactured using our 48-layer X3 technology, and also shipped our first OEM customer samples in the fourth quarter. In January 2016, we began utilizing the new Y2 facility for the conversion of 2D to 3D NAND technology and expect production wafer output late in the first quarter. 3D NAND production will ramp across 2016, with the majority of the output expected in the second half of the year. Due to the very strong yields for our 15nm 2D technology and the relatively low volumes associated with the planned 3D NAND wafer ramp in 2016, we estimate the cost per bit of our 48-layer 3D NAND to be similar to the 15nm 2D NAND costs as we exit 2016, with our next-generation
    3D NAND expected to achieve lower cost versus 2D NAND in 2017. "
    - they claim that 15nm has the best yields they ever had on any process.

    "we expect 3D NAND to represent about 15% to 20% of industry wafer capacity exiting the year. We expect our 3D capacity to be at the lower end of the industry range exiting 2016"

    So they aren't pushing this year for cost reasons but they are shipping. Pretty sure their die is small enough to fit in a microSD so we should see some higher capacity cards with it soon.

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