The U.S.-based subsidiary of Toshiba Memory Corporation, today announced the development of a prototype sample of 96-layer BiCS FLASHTM, its proprietary three-dimensional (3D) flash memory, with 4-bit-per-cell (quad level cell, QLC) technology. With this milestone achievement, Toshiba demonstrates its technology leadership in the storage market by delivering technology that boosts single-chip memory capacity to the highest level yet achieved1.

Toshiba’s new QLC BiCS FLASH significantly expands capacity by pushing the bit count for data per memory cell from three to four. The new product achieves the industry's maximum capacity of 1.33 terabits2 for a single chip, and a 16-die stacked architecture in a single package realizes an unparalleled capacity of 2.66 terabytes.

The number of applications needing huge amounts of storage continues to grow, fed by the enormous volumes of data being generated that need to be accessed and analyzed in real time. Social media, SSDs, edge computing, enterprise applications and the rapidly expanding data center storage market are all areas in which larger capacity storage is required – to name just a few. With the introduction of 96-layer QLC technology, Toshiba Memory enables the development of products that keep pace with the fast-moving storage market.