Samsung today announced that it has begun mass producing an 8 GB NAND flash memory device, providing a much larger and more affordable storage density for consumer and mobile applications such as mobile phones, MP3 players and gaming consoles.

The newest technology offers 25 percent higher production efficiencies over the previous 70 nm technology and also follows the introduction of 80-nm technology for DDR2 DRAM chips in March 2005, it said. The high-density MLC (multi-level-cell) memory is being produced with 60-nanometer (nm) process technology - the smallest used today.

The new 8 GB chip vertically stacks two 4 GB packages, each carrying a vertical stack of four 8 GB dies. Expected to be available in the third quarter of 2006, each 8 GB chip can store 2000 MP3 files or 225 minutes of DVD-quality video.

Samsung plans to further utilize its 8 GB NAND flash memory chip in Samsung's high-density MLC NAND, called moviNAND, to produce a 2 GB-level NAND market solution. The recently introduced moviNAND combines NAND flash memory and a NAND controller and can be embedded in mobile handsets to accommodate the high data storage requirements that accompany the increasing number of multimedia features on mobile phones.