Samsung Electronics, the world's No. 1 memory chipmaker, said Thursday it has begun mass production of its one-terabit quad-level cell ninth-generation vertical NAND, solidifying its leadership in the high-capacity and high-performance NAND flash market.

It is the industry’s first mass production of QLD ninth-generation V-NAND, followed by its first triple-level cell ninth-generation V-NAND production in April this year.

“Kicking off the successful mass production of QLC ninth-generation V-NAND just four months after the TLC version allows us to offer a full lineup of advanced SSD solutions that address the needs for the AI era,” said Hur Sung-hoi, head of flash product and technology at Samsung Electronics.

“As the enterprise SSD market shows rapid growth with stronger demand for AI applications, we will continue solidifying our leadership in the segment through our QLC and TLC ninth-generation V-NAND.”

Samsung plans to expand applications of the QLC ninth-generation V-NAND, starting with branded consumer products and extending into mobile universal flash storage, PCs and server SSDs for customers, including cloud service providers.

The leading memory chip-maker said its QLC ninth-generation V-NAND has brought together several innovations that have produced technological breakthroughs.

Samsung's ninth-generation V-NAND used channel hole etching technology to achieve the industry's highest layer count with a double-stack structure.

Channel hole etching is a technique that creates electron pathways by stacking mold layers and maximizes fabrication productivity.

In particular, this ninth-generation V-NAND, which features QLC technology, reduces the area of cells and peripheral circuits, increasing bit density by about 86 percent compared to the previous generation QLC V-NAND.

Samsung said it used designed mold technology in the latest product to improve data retention performance by roughly 20 percent compared to its predecessor, leading to enhanced product reliability.

Designed mold technology adjusts the spacing of Word Lines, which operate the cells, to ensure uniformity and optimization of cell characteristics across and within layers.

The latest product has doubled write performance and increased data input and output speed by 60 percent compared to the previous generation, thanks to innovations in predictive program technology that forecast cell state changes and minimize unnecessary operations.