https://k4i.com/tags/qlc/ Recent content in QLC on k4i.com Hugo en-us Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://k4i.com/sandisk-sndk-and-kioxias-9th-generation-qlc-nand-a-33-faster-die-that-adds-no-bits/ Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://k4i.com/sandisk-sndk-and-kioxias-9th-generation-qlc-nand-a-33-faster-die-that-adds-no-bits/ <p>Kioxia and SanDisk announced their 9th-generation 2Tb QLC 3D flash memory on August 12, eight days after the same two companies unveiled their 10th-generation QLC technology at the Future of Memory and Storage conference in Santa Clara. The ordering is not a clerical error, and it is the most useful fact in the release. The 10th generation is a node advance: 332 layers, better than 37 Gb/mm², roughly 60 percent more bits per unit area than the 8th generation now in mass production. The 9th generation is not a node advance at all. It bonds an advanced CMOS wafer to the existing memory-array platform, which is to say the same cell array already running in the 8th-generation 2Tb QLC die, and pulls out a 4.8 Gb/s NAND interface, a 33 percent improvement, plus a six-plane architecture, higher read and write bandwidth, and better power efficiency on both paths. Bit density does not move. Hideshi Miyajima said the quiet part in the first quote of the release: the approach delivers high performance while keeping investment costs relatively low. That sentence is the product.</p>