IM Flash Technologies - Intel and Micron's joint venture in NAND flash technology - has started the mass production of 34-nanometer 32 gigabit multi-level cell NAND flash memory chip. The chip is built with a manufacturing process that enables the companies to shrink chip components in order to get more memory in the same amount of space. The latest product can fit 4 GB of memory on a core and eight cores on a layer for a total of 64 GB of memory on a two-layer stack.

With the recent announcement, the companies take the lead in Flash technology, ahead of Samsung and Toshiba with the only monolithic 32 Gb NAND chip.

In the announcement on Monday, the company said that the product will be able to help companies create greater capacities of NAND Flash memory for devices like cameras, phones, media players and computers at a lower production cost than what is presently available. As space is a premium in these devices, the technology fits into a standard 48-lead thin small-outline package (TSOP), and can be used to increase the storage capacity of solid-state drives.

In a statement, Brian Shirley, VP of Micron's memory group, said: "The tiny 34-nm, 32-GB chip enables our customers to easily increase their NAND storage capacity for a number of consumer and computing products."

Intel and Micron hope to have their Lehi facility to more than 50% of capacity in producing the 34nm technology by the end of this year, and expect to have sample products using it by early 2009.