Samsung First to Mass Produce 16Gb NAND Flash Memory

Samsung Electronics announced today that it has become the first to begin mass producing 16 gigabit NAND flash, the highest capacity memory chip now available. The company said it will fabricate the devices in 51 nanometers, the finest process technology to be used in memory mass production to date. Samsung’s 51nm NAND flash chips can be produced 60 percent more efficiently than those produced with 60nm process technology. Samsung achieved this new migration milestone just eight months after announcing production of its 60nm 8Gb NAND flash last August.

The new 16Gb chip which has a multi-level cell (MLC) structure can facilitate capacity expansion by offering 16 gigabytes (GBs) of memory in a single memory card. Furthermore, by applying the new process technology, Samsung has accelerated the chip’s read and write speeds by approximately 80 percent over current MLC data processing speeds.

Further reading:
Samsung has plans for terabit flash memory

Samsung continues to double the density of flash memory each year. This 12 month doubling rate is faster than Moore’s law

Samsung has been doubling the density every 12 months since 2002

If they keep doubling then the memory cards go as follows:
2007 128 GB card
2008 256 GB card
2009 512 GB card
2010 1 TB card
2011 2 TB card
2012 4 TB card
2013 8 TB card