A company owned jointly by Intel and memory maker Micron Technology started mass producing NAND flash memory chips using the 34-nanometer technology, the companies announced on Monday. The NAND flash memory is usually used to store songs, movies and more in iPods, iPhones and a range of other consumer electronic goods. The venture between these two companies is called IM Flash Technologies and it expects 50 percent of the chips, which are located at a factory in Lehi, Utah, to be made using the 34nm technology by the end of this year. The nanometer measurement describes the size of the smallest transistors and other parts that can be manufactured on a single chip. There are about three to six atoms in a nanometer, and there are a billion nanometers in a meter.

The current chips, made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) or Intel, use the 40 or 45nm technology. Basically, the more transistors on a chip and the closer they are together, the fast the chip can perform tasks. Furthermore, as the chips get smaller, they also get less expensive, and that’s excellent for consumers. IM Flash is manufacturing 32Gbyte NAND chips the size of a thumbnail with its 34nm technology, expecting the chips to be used in small SSDs or flash memory cards, like the ones for digital cameras, digital camcorders and personal MP3s.

The 32Gbyte chips are multi-level cell (MLC) chips, and that means that they can handle more rewrites than the single level cell (SLC) variety of NAND flash. The world’s largest NAND flash memory chip maker, Samsung Electronics, is upgrading its chip factories to use 42nm technology, planning to start the 30nm production next year. Anyway, the company has already presented a multi-level cell 64Gbyte NAND flash memory chip made using the 30nm manufacturing technology last year.