Hynix claims Flash memory breakthrough

A more compact form of Flash memory will help to cut prices of the storage chips by 30 per cent, according to Korean media reports.

Chip maker Hynix will begin mass producing the new chips by the end of this year, executives said.

"We will churn out the product from October this year and consider equipping the chip into solid state drives depending on the situation," said Hynix spokesman Lee Si-hyun, according to the Korea Times.

The new 32Gb chips cram three bits (binary digits) of storage in the space formerly occupied by two by simplifying and reducing the scale of circuitry and sharing some circuitry between storage bits.

"When storage capacity per cell expands, there can be a problem which causes stored information to get entangled," a Hynix representative told local daily the Chosun Ilbo.

"We overcame this obstacle and completed developing three-bit-per-cell technology which laid the groundwork for reducing production cost."

As well as being approximately 30 per cent cheaper, Flash chips built with the new design will be approximately 30 per cent smaller than existing chips.

However, most of the volume of a modern chip package is taken up with the packaging material and the interconnections that link the tiny silicon chip to a circuit board.

It is therefore unclear whether a smaller chip size will translate to a significant reduction in the scale of finished products.

Other memory developers have also discussed plans for so-called '3x' Flash memory cells, but none has announced a firm launch date.