"Toshiba and SanDisk's Flash Forward partnership is ready to populate the newly constructed Fab 5 in Yokkaichi, Japan. Both companies announced new 3bit-per cell (X3) Bit Cost Scaling (BiCS) Flash with 48-layers on an unknown lithography process node.
The new 3bit-per-cell BiCS just announced increases the number of layers to forty-eight, and the die density to 256 Gbit. That's 32 GB in the size of your pinky fingernail. Companies can already stack up to sixteen die in a package. Our calculator tells us that's 512 GB of TLC NAND flash per package. Companies often use up to 16 packages in high-performance client SSDs. If everything works as intended, we could very well see 8 TB client SSDs within the next two years.
Toshiba, Micron and Samsung have all either ramped up production in new factories or have plans to in the coming months. The new factories spread across the globe not only increase production but also enable new flash technology like BiCS to bear fruit" - TomsHardware
Full Article: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/toshiba-sandisk-bics,29753.html