You can’t, my grandmother told me, put a quart into a pint pot, but it seems Samsung are determined to do just that with their next-gen NAND flash memory chips: they’re promising capacities of 128GB by 2009, which could find their way into a future iPod Touch.  It’s all done by a dual-pass process where the standard, 60nm-spaced chips are interlaced with a new, far more precise pattern of lithography that leaves you with 30nm rows.

 Samsung 30nm flash memory

 Samsung 30nm flash memory

It’s a process known as self-aligned double patterning, and Samsung are claiming that it actually comes in cheaper than previous methods of flash chip manufacture.  Of most interest to consumers, however, is the capacity: in a multi-layer cell (MLC) that could be 128GB-worth of 64-gigabit chips, while in a simpler single-layer cell (SLC) you’d have half of those figures but a chip that would potentially last longer and be faster running.  128GB would be enough to store 32,000 songs or 80 full-length, DVD-quality movies.

Expect commercial applications of the 128GB chip in 2009.

[via Electronista]