Toshiba unwraps 24nm flash memory in possible iPhone 5 clue
updated 10:00 pm EDT, Tue April 5, 2011
Toshiba intros 24nm SmartNAND flash memory
Toshiba upgraded its NAND flash memory Tuesday night in a possible hint at the timing and features of the iPhone 5. Its new SmartNAND is based on a dense 24 nanometer process and allows flash chips up to 64GB for "media players, tablet PCs" and other devices. Along with being more space-efficient, the new design has a better memory controller that speeds up reads and writes.
All of the chips now have their own built-in error correction to take some of the work of guaranteeing accurate date away from a given device's main processor.
Capacities start at 4GB for the new SmartNAND. Capacities 16GB and lower are being made as production samples in April or May and will be in mass production by the spring. The 32GB and 64GB chips won't be sampling until at least June and are slated to ship en masse for the summer.
The schedules may help back mounting beliefs that the iPhone 5 will 64GB iPhone 4 prototype appeared last month that hinted Apple was exploring the idea as early as last year. Just on Tuesday, a possible if disputed iPod touch with 128GB of storage also appeared and hinted at an upgrade for the MP3 player as well. Both the iPhone and the iPod have been stuck at 32GB and 64GB of storage respectively since 2009 and are increasingly overdue for additional space.
