Toshiba Promises Low Latency XL-Flash

Toshiba Memory is working on a new type of 3D Nand memory that should provide much lower latency. XL-Flash will initially be used for slc-nand, but should eventually also come to mlc.

Read latency with XL-Flash is one-tenth that of TLC memory, Toshiba Memory argued at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, according to AnandTech. With the increased random reading performance that this brings, Toshiba’s XL-Flash has to compete with Samsung’s Z-Nand and Intel’s 3D XPoint memory. It is therefore expected that Toshiba Memory will mainly focus on enterprise applications with the new type of 3d-nand.

XL-Flash achieves the lower latency by dividing the memory cell surfaces into more parts and using shorter bitlines. The memory is based on Toshiba Memory’s fourth-generation BiCS technology, which stands for Bit Cost Scaling, in which the memory is built up of 96 layers. When Toshiba Memory will bring the memory in products to the market and what they will cost, it is not known.