One minor surprise at the Apple iPhone 4 launch earlier this month was the storage on offer from the new smartphone. The absence of a 64GB iPhone 4 raised a few eyebrows, especially given Toshiba had already revealed a 64GB NAND chip back in December 2009; now Toshiba has followed up with a 128GB NAND flash memory module, the biggest embedded chip in the industry and seemingly ideal for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.
The new modules measure a scant 17 x 22 x 1.4 mm and squeeze in sixteen 64Gbit4 (equal to 8GB) NAND chips produced on Toshiba’s own 32nm production line. They also manage to pack in the controller circuit too, making for a smaller overall gadget, reduced data errors and a cheaper bill of materials.
Toshiba are estimating up to 55MB per second read speeds and up to 21MB per second write speeds from the memory, which will also be available in smaller capacities than 128GB. Mass production is expected to begin in Q4 2010, perhaps perfectly timed for the iPad 2G refresh in early 2011.