The History of NAND Flash

Of the different types of flash memory available, NAND flash is the most widely used today. NAND flash memory is used in numerous devices including smartphones, video games, SSDs in computers, and storage drives in data centres. But what are the origins of NAND flash memory?

 Here we explore how and why NAND flash emerged. 

What is NAND Flash? 

Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be erased and reprogrammed. Early flash memory had to be erased completely before it could be rewritten, but in 1987, NAND Flash technology was first unveiled by Fujio Masuoka of Toshiba Memory Corporation, which further developed flash memory, allowing it to be erased, written, and read in blocks. 

Toshiba Memory Corporation changed its name to KIOXIA Corporation in 2019 and has been instrumental in spearheading the growth of NAND flash technology for over three decades.  

History of NAND Flash 

The first significant use for NAND flash was the digital answering machine in the mid 1990’s. NAND flash continued to grow in significance in the late 1990s, with the emergence of flash cards for digital cameras. The 2000s saw a further rise in NAND flash usage as digital cameras proliferated and smartphones emerged, storing data on NAND flash cards. 
In more recent years, NAND flash has been used in portable computers, in many cases has replaced hard disk drives, as well as being used in data centre storage devices, and for general storage and transfer of data. 

In the past, flash memory was considered to be costly in comparison to other memory solutions on the market, such as DRAM, but in 2004, due to production volume increases and economies of scale, NAND flash prices dropped significantly leading to widespread adoption of the technology. 

We have seen big changes since the launch of NAND flash in 1987; migrating from costly core-based SSDs, through economical flash-based SSDs, to today's widespread use of SSDs, with the market for NAND flash now estimated to be in the region of $75 - $80 billion.1 

The Future of NAND Flash  

Looking to the future, our industry experts predict that NAND flash will increase in cell density and bits per cell as the demands of data centres for cloud and hyperscale computing, edge computing, and other applications, increase demands on memory providers for scalable, low latency memory. 

Techbuyer and KIOXIA 

As a full partner with KIOXIA, Techbuyer offers high-quality and reliable NAND flash memory components designed to enhance the performance of your IT hardware. NAND has the potential to accelerate the performance and reduce bottlenecks within your IT system for an overall productive experience of applications.  

Browse our full range of KIOXIA SSDs here.

Enquire with our team now to explore NAND flash for your server solution here.  

To find out more about Techbuyer and KIOXIA or to request a quote, please get in touch here.