Solid state drives are becoming more and more prevalent in today’s world but the cost can be quite prohibitive. Thankfully there are companies like Micron out there who are constantly striving to develop technologies such as this and make them more accessible to everyone.

Micron has recently announced that it is in the process of manufacturing samples of 16nm process 128GB flash chips thus making them the creators of the smallest ever 128GB multi-level cell (MLC) NAND Flash memory. If all goes well this should allow for the making of less expensive flash memory based devices such as SSDs and USB sticks as well as to allow for more memory to be packed into these devices than is currently possible.

Micron reckons that they can manage to pack up to 6 terabytes of storage on a single wafer. Quite impressive if you ask me. There has been some progress made in the past with regards to shrinking MLC NAND Flash memory such as SanDisk’s 19nm process as well as Intel and their 20nm chips but 16nm undoubtedly takes the cake.

I already know that many of you out there are already excited after reading this news and are anxiously awaiting cheaper SSDs with more storage capacity, because I know I am!

Micron is expected to begin full production of the new chips in the 4th quarter of this year and they also intend to release a new line of SSDs utilizing the chips in the early part of 2014.

[via Geek.com]