Intel has announced that it is shipping to equipment manufacturers its 25-nanometer (nm) NAND flash memory chip, which doubles the capacity of its previous 34nm chip.

The new chip, which can hold 8GB of data, was revealed last February. Manufacturers of solid state drives (SSD), USB sticks and removable and embedded memory cards put multiple NAND flash chips on a board along with multiple I/O paths to create mass storage devices.

It was made by Intel's and Micron Technology's joint venture company, IMFT, it measures 0.35-in. by 0.74-in. According to Intel it can hold 7,000 photos, eight hours of video or 2,000 songs. It is made up of 64Gbit NAND chips and IMFT's latest lithography technology makes it possible to build products using half as many chips as is possible with the current 34nm lithography technology.

It will also cut the overall cost to produce mobile products. The 25nm flash product uses Version 2.2 of the Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) specification, which currently has a data transfer rate of 200MB/sec.