Samsung Electronics today revealed plans for a new NAND flash facility in South Korea to meet growing data center demands.

The construction in Pyeongtaek, South Korea will expand Samsung’s NAND flash production capacity, paving the way for mass production of their V-NAND memory in the second half of 2021.

“The new investment reaffirms our commitment to sustain undisputed leadership in memory technologies, even in uncertain times”, said Cheol Choi, Executive Vice President of Memory Global Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics.

Samsung, the world leader in NAND flash memory for the last 18 years, expects the facility will help to address the mid and long-term demands for NAND flash memory. This is particularly important in the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, fuelled by artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and 5G expansion globally and in South Korea.

Cheol Choi added: “We will continue to serve the market with the most optimised solutions available, while contributing to growth of the overall IT industry and the economy in general.”

Samsung’s sixth generation V-NAND SSD, a recent flash storage innovation, features the industry’s fastest data transfer rate to assist the smartphone and data center market.

The new facility will add to the existing NAND production lines by Samsung, including two of the world’s largest at their Pyeongtaek Campus as well as one in Hwaseong, South Korea, and Xi’an in China.

What is NAND flash memory and how can it help data centers?

NAND, short for NOT AND in boolean speak, is the most common type of flash memory technology that doesn’t require power to retain data, as it uses a metal-oxide semiconductor to provide extra charge to the memory cell when there is no power.

NAND can be found in Solid State Drives, USB flash drives and SD cards. Solid State Drives in data centers are becoming increasingly common in place of hard disk drives to store and serve data due to the decreasing costs of flash memory.

SSDs are typically faster, smaller, use less energy and have no moving parts, unlike HHDs. The advantage of NAND flash within an SSD is that it can erase and write data in less time, allows for greater storage capacity, and radiates less heat and consumes less power than other technology.