Phison is Tiawanese company the specializes in controllers for NAND flash memory chips such as those used in flash drives, memory cards, and solid-state drives. Recently, Phison announced that their new controllers will support Yangtze Memory Technologies, 3D NAND flash memory chips. Phison plans to develop their partnership starting with consumer storage devices and then extending their service to higher end products including industrial embedded storage and enterprise servers.
Yangtze Memory Technologies introduced back in 2017 a new line of chip architecture. Xtacking chip architecture was developed in house for 3D NAND flash memory. Production started off with 64-layer 3D TLC NAND chips in 2019. Later, Yangtze Memory Technologies developed 126 layers bypassing the common 96 layers chips altogether. Yangtze Memory Technologies has partnered with Taiwanese companies Adata, and Silicon Motion in the past. Adata specializes in DRAM modules, USB Flash drives, hard disk drives, solid state drives, memory cards, while Silicon Motion also develops most controllers for flash memory chips.
Phison is expected to support 64-layer and looming 128-layer 3D NAND chips along with Xtracking 2.0 chips. Adata, Phison, and Silicon Motion do not make their own flash chips making the partnership with Yangtze Memory Technologies crucial as Yangtze Memory Technologies is one of the few companies that can compete with Micron, Kioxia, and Intel with their products and price range.
More SSD part manufacturers have been approached by Yangtze Memory Technologies and it is likely they will make the jump to their services and products. Yangtze Memory Technologies hopes that their NAND chips will be able to penetrate the SSD markets among western align markets, which is one of the reasons they are partnering with Taiwanese companies. China’s state-owned Tsinghua Unigroup having a controlling interest over Yangtze Memory Technologies does not seem to have tarnished the company’s reputation with Taiwanese companies or other companies in countries that are wary of Chinese state interference in private businesses.