Micron said yesterday that it has started shipping 232-layer stacked NAND flash memory, the most advanced memory that can support the data-intensive needs of consumer electronics.

Alvaro Toledo, general manager of Micron's data center storage division, said the new chip has a transfer rate 50 percent higher than Micron's previous-generation NAND chips. The chip has the industry's highest areal density, 16 232-layer NAND packaged into about one-third the size of a postage stamp, and has a larger capacity of up to 2TB.

The flash is expected to begin mass production by the end of 2022, and will initially ship to customers in component form through the Crucial SSD consumer product line.