Die shrinks can be a wonderful thing.  A die shrink to 40 nm is helping AMD/ATI further its competitive edge over competitor NVIDIA in the desktop graphics market.  Die shrinks make consoles like the PS3 and Xbox more affordable and more profitable.  And both AMD and Intel have used die shrinks to deliver faster, more core CPUs over the last decade.

In the field of flash memory, die shrinks have been carried out at a frenzied pace.  In 2008, Micron hit 34 nm and Samsung hit 32 nm.  This year Toshiba/SanDisk caught up, hitting 32 nm.  The shrink dies brought with them performance improvements -- lower power consumption, smaller size, and faster access speeds.

Now, Micron is preparing to further reap the rewards of its own die-shrink campaign.  Micron's flash unit, co-owned by Intel, is reportedly readying new 34 nm NAND flash memory chips for the market.  After seeing relatively strong sales of its first generation, Micron will soon be releasing revised 16 and 32 Gigabit NAND chips. 

Both chips are much smaller, and available in Single Level Cell (SLC) and Multi-Level Cell (MLC) designs.  The SLC designs are the premium models, featuring faster write speeds, lower power consumption and higher cell endurance.  The MLC meanwhile will form the basis of budget offerings. 

The new MLC 32 Gb NAND chip is 17 percent smaller, while the 16 Gb chip is a tiny 84mm².  The tiny footprints should help to increase memory capacity of devices such as iPods, iPhones, as well as solid-state drives.

Brian Shirley, vice president of Micron’s memory group brags, "Our industry-leading NAND products are opening new possibilities for some of the world’s most popular consumer electronic devices.  With our new 16- and 32Gb NAND chips in mass production, we are enabling customers to design cost-effective, high-capacity storage in their small-form factor products, using less space and fewer die. In addition, the high-speed interface is ideal in the industry’s quest to continue to increase throughput performance for SSDs."

The chips will be used in a variety of Lexar memory products to be released in September.  The chips' ONFI 2.1 synchronous interface delivers transfer speeds up to 200 Mbit/s, compared to 40 Mbit/s with traditional NAND SLC.  This allows manufacturers to offer 6 Gbit/s SATA speeds, offering twice the throughput of standard 3 Gbit/s SATA speeds, according to Micron.