Toshiba, Western Digital Begin Full-Scale Production of 3D Flash Memory

Toshiba and Western Digital commemorated Friday the completion of a 297,000-square-foot semiconductor plant in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture, Japan, to mark the transition from 2D NAND to 3D flash memory production. Flash memory in smartphones, solid-state drives and other applications is driving growth of the global flash memory market due to higher densities and better device performance, said the companies. First-phase production at New Fab 2 began in March for 3D flash memory and the companies plan an additional $8 billion investment to expand operations depending on market conditions, they said. Yokkaichi operations will use big data processing to analyze over 1.6 billion data points each day to improve manufacturing efficiency, they said.