Direct:
The interesting part of SK Hynix reportedly preparing its Dalian Phase 2 fab for 200-layer-class NAND is the architecture they are sticking with: floating gate. That is the Intel lineage, not SK Hynix's own.
SK Hynix (000660.KS) builds its mainline NAND on charge-trap flash, and its leading node is already at 321 layers with a QLC ramp due in the second half of this year. Dalian is a different animal. It came over in the Intel (INTC) NAND acquisition that created Solidigm, and it still runs Intel's floating-gate 192-layer flash. Moving it into the mid-200-layer range keeps that separate technology line breathing rather than converting the fab to charge trap.
There is a real reason to keep floating gate around. The isolated conductive gate holds charge stably across many voltage states, which lends itself to dense QLC. Charge trap gets there too, which is how SK Hynix already ships 321-layer QLC, but floating gate is what Solidigm built its high-capacity enterprise drives on: the 122TB D5-P5336 today, with a 245TB part on the roadmap that pushes into 200-layer territory. Those drives own the AI data-lake niche, the read-heavy capacity tier where petabytes of inference and retrieval data sit behind the GPUs. Floating-gate density is the whole pitch.
The constraints matter more than the layer count here. US export controls cap the equipment SK Hynix can install in a China fab, so Dalian cannot leapfrog to bleeding-edge tooling. On top of that, the SAMR antitrust conditions from the Intel deal keep PCIe and SATA eSSD output flowing out of the facility. The fab is boxed in on both sides. A floating-gate bump from 192 into the mid-200s is the realistic upgrade that fits inside those walls.
For anyone buying consumer SSDs, this is not your drive. Floating gate now lives almost entirely in datacenter QLC. But these high-capacity eSSD ramps eat wafer starts and NAND output, and the market is already tight heading into 2026. More capacity aimed at AI storage means fewer bits reaching the consumer channel.
Drafted with AI assistance against parallel reporting.
Sources:
- DIGITIMES, June 2, 2026 (SK Hynix Dalian Phase 2 floating-gate NAND report)
- TrendForce, March 30, 2026 (Dalian mid-200-layer upgrade, SAMR eSSD conditions, Samsung Xi'an)
- TrendForce, November 11, 2025 (SK Hynix 321-layer QLC ramp in 2H26)
- Blocks & Files, October 9, 2025 (Solidigm roadmap, floating-gate density, 245TB)
- Tom's Hardware, September 2025 (Intel Dalian fab now registered to SK Hynix, US equipment limits)
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