SK hynix said late on Wednesday that it had begun mass production of its 238-layer "4D" (actually a form of 3D) NAND memory devices that promise to enable high-performance and high-capacity SSDs. The new chips boast a 2400 MT/s data transfer rate and could be used to power the next generation of best SSDs, high-speed models what will featuring a PCIe 5.0 x4 interfaces and offer sequential read/write speed of 12 GB/s and higher.
From a performance PC enthusiast's point of view, the key advantage of SK hynix's 238-layer TLC NAND IC is its interface speed of 2400 MT/s. This represents a 50% increase over prior generation and is something that is needed to build SSDs with sequential read/write speeds of 12 GB/s and higher as 3D NAND devices with a 1600 MT/s interface cannot enable transfer rates to saturate a PCIe Gen5 x4 interface.
