Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. announced that it is now sampling a 16-gigabit (Gb) NAND flash memory with customers.  This is the first NAND flash using 50 nanometer (nm) process technology.

The early samples of this high density NAND flash memory have a multi-level cell (MLC) design with a 4KB page size, which improves upon the conventional 2KB paging system for MLC NAND flash.  The new 4 KB page size will double the read speed, while increasing write performance by 150%.  This will allow mobile consumers to enjoy faster data transfer speeds when storing or reading large data files.

Samsung plans to begin mass producing its 16Gb NAND flash memory in the first quarter of 2007.