Samsung has announced that it is the first company to begin mass production of 16Gb NAND flash memory. The new 51 nanometer (nm) memory is based on a multi-level cell (MLC) structure and is 60 percent more efficient than its 60nm counterpart.

"In rolling out the densest NAND flash in the world, we are throwing open the gates to a much wider playing field for flash-driven consumer electronics," said Jim Elliott, Samsung Semiconductor's director for flash marketing. "To minimize production costs and improve performance, we have applied the finest process technology a ‘half generation’ ahead of the industry, which is introducing 55nm and higher."

The 51nm NAND flash memory chips are also as much as 80 percent faster than current 60nm MLC-based products. The new MLC design offers read speeds of 30MB/sec and write speeds of 8MB/sec as opposed to 17MB/sec and 4.4MB/sec for the previous generation.

The 16Gb NAND chips will be used in devices offering up to 16GB of storage space in a single package. Samsung will target digital memory cards, MP3 players and cell phones with its new high capacity 51nm 16Gb NAND chips.

Samsung will also offer a new suite of flash software to allow cell phones and MP3 players to take advantage of 4KB pages instead of the 2KB pages now used with 60nm NAND flash memory. The memory chips will also support 4-bit error-correcting code (ECC).

"As the demand for video content grows stronger by the day, products that feature extended recording time of high-resolution video footage, including mid-to-high-range digital cameras, will particularly benefit from the high capacity and performance of 16Gb NAND flash memory," Samsung said in a press statement.