Overview
- Reports say Samsung has produced a 900‑layer Class V‑NAND prototype by bonding two 450‑layer cell wafers using a process called Cell Multi‑Bonding, and the device is not yet commercialized.
- Engineers addressed two key manufacturing problems by redesigning the Upper Chuck to counter wafer warpage and using overlay‑correction techniques to achieve microscopic alignment for the bonded wafers.
- The bonded 900‑layer design offers roughly three times the density of many current commercial NAND chips, which could enable multi‑terabyte SSDs in a single drive bay and more on‑device storage for AI workloads.
- Major uncertainties remain about mass production because the bonding step adds process complexity that could raise costs and reduce yield, and market impacts will depend on whether strong AI and data‑center demand sustains near‑term absorption of new capacity.
- The development joins parallel efforts in China and Japan that use different approaches such as Die‑on‑Board packaging, highlighting a broader industry push to raise usable NAND density amid supply‑chain and export‑control pressures.