More-than-Moore memory grows up

More-than-Moore memory grows up

Macronix is poised to unveil working 3-D NAND flash memory at sub-40 nm. The new architecture enables the use of a “staircase” bit-line contact formation method (Figure 3 ). The result is an eight-layer device with a wordline feature size of 37.5 nm, bit-line feature size of 75 nm, 64 cells per string, and a core array efficiency of 63%. The researchers say the technology not only is lower cost than conventional, 2-D sub-20-nm NAND but also can provide 1 Tbit of memory if further scaled to 25-nm feature sizes. At that size, the Macronix device would comprise only 32 layers, whereas 3-D stackable NANDs with vertical channels would need almost 100 layers to reach the same memory density.

Full article: http://www.edn.com/design/integrated-circuit-design/44029...