China Develops High Capacity QLC 3D NAND: YMTC at 1.33 Tb
by Gavin Bonshor on April 13, 2020 11:00 AM EST
Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC) has announced that it's developed its new 128-layer 1.33 Tb QLC 3D NAND memory chip, the X2-6070. The new chip is based on its Xtacking architecture which enables it to run with super high I/O while maximising the density of its memory arrays. YMTC has also unveiled its plan for a 128-layer 512 Gb TLC chip, the X2-9060, designed to meet more diverse application requirements.
We first reported on the China-based company YMTC entering its 3D NAND memory chips into production back in 2018, when it unveiled its Xtacking Architecture at the Flash Memory Summit. While it didn't disclose technical details of its announcement, it did state the Xtacking architecture has the capability to run the I/O with speeds of up to 3 Gbps. Fast forward to 2019, and it announced that it planned to start volume production of its 64-layer 3D NAND which we also reported on.
Using its Xtacking architecture at the forefront of production, both the new X2-6070 and X2-9060 feature its updated 2.0 variant which YMTC claims to bring more benefits to flash memory. Both the X2-6070 and X2-9060 are claimed to deliver up to 1.6 Gb/s of I/O performance and operate with a Vccg voltage of 1.2 V. YTMC has stated that the X2-6070 QLC based chip will be first used in consumer-grade SSDs, with the aim to then deliver its capabilities into Enterprise focused drives.
YMTC X2-6070 128-Layer QLC 3D NAND memory chip
The QLC based X2-6070 has 128-layers and more than 366 billion effective charge-trap memory cells. Each memory cell has 4-bit of data, which equates to 1.33 Tb of storage capacity. Everything is proportionate to cost, and it seems like YMTC, which is newer than most to 3D NAND stacking, could again improve its Xtacking architecture in the future.
We expect that YMTC, who is part of the Tsinghua Unigroup in China, is using the XMC fab in Wuhan China to produce its wafers for its 3D NAND. Tsinghua acquired XMC back in 2016, and while we haven't had it confirmed, it is likely to be producing its wafers at the XMC fab, which is one of China's largest semiconductor fabrication plants which also uses the Xtacking architecture.
YMTC hasn't released official specifications or data sheets about the X2-6070 QLC and X2-9060 MLC memory chips, nor has it stated when it is likely to be integrated with its controller partners (or which controllers support it).
Related Reading
- Yangtze Memory Unveils Xtacking Architecture for 3D NAND: Up to 3 Gbps I/O
- Flash Memory Summit 2018, Yangtze Memory Technology Keynote Live BlogL Unleashing 3D NAND
- YMTC Starts Volume Production of 64-Layer 3D NAND
- SK Hynix Sampling New PCIe 4.0 96L SSDs, 128L 4D NAND Enterprise SSDs
- Micron to Start Volume Production of 128-Layer 3D NAND with RG Architecture This Quarter
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Billy Tallis - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link
The Xtacking design may use a wafer bonding technique derived from Invensas IP, but applied in a new market segment. But whether or not they stole that bit, it means a lot of the chip's design is drastically different from the NAND already on the market. YMTC's 3D NAND is probably less of a rip-off/clone than the 3D NAND from Toshiba and SK Hynix were, following in Samsung's footsteps.watzupken - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Anyway I don't know if it is because of increased coverage on China's technology, or there are significant improvement in China's technology. If it is the latter, then it goes to show that they are very serious about making sure that they can break away from foreign technology dependency. I recall seeing from a hardware perspective, a new processor based on the first gen Zen architecture, SMIC @ 7nm, and now this.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link
My phobia is for QLC NAND, which is mostly garbage.TLC was bad enough but 3D lithography saved it. QLC, though.... it ain't Scottish.
Quantumz0d - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link
So it begins, haha, these fools at WallSt wanted profits and didn't give a damn about their IP. Huawei from zero and utter failure trash mate phones to now #2 beating Apple and shoving from the back at Samsung and then you have all these brainwashed kids who think China is a great player and well worth, if you look at EMUI garbage it has a locked down Filesystem called EROFS which I never heard in any of AT reviews unfortunately and on top it had a Backdoor called LZPlay which circumvents the Google Services restrictions, thankfully that's closed and the EMUI doesn't respect user at all, just like the history of Huawei PLA and the damn Chinese CCP grip and choke-hold on not just these but also American corporations - Apple, a spineless corporation bending to China and gave away the iCloud keys to the Guizhou Cloud Operations owned by CCP for enabling the spying on their own citizens and parade about Privacy in their webpage, everyone thinks it's real but in reality a blackmarket tool can break the stupid iPhone wide open and do all sorts of shit, security through obscurity at peak. Also how they banned VPN in China and doublespeak by their CEO otherwise, utter disgrace.AMD shamelessly approached the Chinese for the funding and bam their Zen IP even though castrated went to Chinese and made a processor as well. Hygon. And surprisingly Obama govt allowed it happen, DoD cool I guess. Now their Memory portfolio is also ripping off some technology IP as well, soon TSMC will be cloned as well, that's the only thing which is keeping China at bay, once a fab comes up then these will infiltrate the poor economies like Africa and other countries, just like how India is dominated by Chinese OEMs to bone.
The Americans who enabled this should feel ashamed but they never will, wonder how the future holds up. Esp with the real danger of the Biowarfare of Corona aspect and how Chinese influence is growing day by day, Sony buys stake in BiliBili which enabled Blitzchung related censorship drama, Tencent owns stake in Reddit, Movie industry (Terminator Woke Fate, Bumblebee - both Paramount, Sony's Venom and etc). The naysayers will say Muh America is evil NSA Snowden and all as usual.
Diogene7 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link
From my humble personal point of view, it would be quite a big milestone achievement for YMTC if they can get a 128-layer 512 Gb TLC chip in production toward H1 2021 or H2 2021 : I think it would be trailing Kioxia, SK hynix from approx. less than 1 year.I wish that Chinese semiconductor manufacturers to succeed to push the currently leading NAND flash manufacturers to allocate their ressources to kick off manufacturing of long delayed Storage Class Memory (SCM), like it happened with LCD productions that Samsung plans to stop end of 2020 to instead reallocate the ressources to OLED :).
zodiacfml - Saturday, April 18, 2020 - link
Now I'm starting to believe this CCP virus comfing from a "lab" in Wuhan. If one manufactures these latest 128L QLC NAND in Wuhan, then Wuhan must be a tech zone/area. Now I feel worse about that Chinese doctor who discovered the virus and died from it.