Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq:MU) today announced another new storage industry milestone—the integration of its 20nm NAND flash storage media into a high-endurance, high-capacity enterprise system. San Jose-based Skyera is using Micron's 20nm, 128 gigabit (Gb) multilevel cell (MLC) NAND flash storage media to pack an astounding 44 terabytes (TB) into a single, compact enterprise storage system for big data, cloud computing, and virtualization applications.

Skyera's Skyhawk system uses more than 3,000 Micron flash storage components, creating a high-capacity, high-performance storage solution that fits into a 1U form factor—about the size of a pizza box. Watch Skyera discuss their collaboration with Micron in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOhA55IgBeg

Both the end system and the components have earned industry awards for innovation. The Skyhawk storage system's impressive capabilities earned it Best of Show at this year's Flash Memory Summit in August. In February, UBM TechInsights recognized Micron's groundbreaking 20nm MLC NAND (developed jointly with Intel); giving it their top honor—Semiconductor of the Year. This 20nm process technology is critical to creating storage media with the capacity, endurance, and cost-effectiveness required for enterprise storage on this scale—and Micron's device is the only MLC NAND available in a 128Gb density.

"We're excited to be collaborating with Micron on this project. The capacity point achieved by our Skyhawk would not have been possible without Micron's 128Gb chip," said Radoslav Danilak, Skyera CEO. "Skyhawk will revolutionize the mainstream enterprise solid-state storage market by delivering next-generation performance and capacity at a price point equivalent to spinning disks. All that is possible because of our collaboration with Micron in bringing leading-edge NAND to the enterprise market."

"With cloud applications creating tremendous demand for fast, efficient data centers, customers like Skyera are looking to Micron for innovative flash storage solutions that can deliver both performance and capacity," said Glen Hawk, vice president of Micron's NAND Solutions Group. "Skyera's implementation of our leading-edge NAND flash storage media is a perfect example of the impact that high-performance, high-capacity flash storage can have on the enterprise market."

The demand for enterprise-capable NAND flash storage is also being driven by massive growth in big data applications. To meet the industry's demanding data access requirements, servers require high-performance, high-capacity storage that NAND flash delivers. Because it's exponentially faster and uses less power than hard drives, flash storage can also significantly reduce the footprint and power requirements for a given storage application.

Micron's 20nm monolithic 128Gb device was the first in the industry to enable a terabit (Tb) of data storage in a single fingertip-size package. It is currently in mass production and shipping to numerous customers for use in a variety of storage applications.