February 8, 2005 – Toshiba Corp. and SanDisk Corp. have unveiled an 8Gbit NAND flash memory chip fabricated with 70nm process technologies, with read speeds of 60MB/sec, 40% faster than the previous generation. Chip area efficiencies were achieved by utilizing multilevel cell technology and new circuit design techniques.
Production is slated for this summer, and by 2006 the companies expect the technology will become “the production workhorse” for their combined flash-memory joint venture, FlashVision.