Facebook Asks For QLC NAND, Toshiba Answers with 100TB QLC SSDs With TSV

[Guest]

Facebook asked for denser and cheaper 100TB QLC NAND SSDs at the Flash Memory Summit. Coincidentally, an hour later, Toshiba laid out its ambitious plans to develop 100TB QLC SSDs. According to our calculations, QLC may also work its way to the desktop

Facebook Asks For QLC NAND, Toshiba Answers with 100TB QLC SSDs With TSV : Read more

 

[jaber2]

I think no one should Dye for this 32 Die stack

 

[PC-Cobbler]

"a friend of mine (a respected SSD engineer) vehemently insisted that MLC was unsuitable for data center use (which I found amusing)"

The author should have been amused because some fool named a scheme with two bits of data MLC instead of the correct DLC. But his friend was merely ahead of his time. I'd bet that endurance of QLC is not 3000-6000 TB (the units were omitted in the chart) as Toshiba is promising, but some figure below the bottom of the stated range, given that Samsung's TLC PM863 has endurance of 1400 TB for 960 GB, while its MLC SM863 has that of 6160 TB for the same size of drive.

 

[tripleX]

It is listed in PB in the picture.

 

[PaulAlcorn]

"a friend of mine (a respected SSD engineer) vehemently insisted that MLC was unsuitable for data center use (which I found amusing)"

The author should have been amused because some fool named a scheme with two bits of data MLC instead of the correct DLC. But his friend was merely ahead of his time. I'd bet that endurance of QLC is not 3000-6000 TB (the units were omitted in the chart) as Toshiba is promising, but some figure below the bottom of the stated range, given that Samsung's TLC PM863 has endurance of 1400 TB for 960 GB, while its MLC SM863 has that of 6160 TB for the same size of drive.

It is an odd situation, the name for MLC is inaccurate, a few companies have tried to rectify the situation, actually. Samsung referred to its NAND as two-bit MLC in an attempt to clear it up, but it never really took hold. MLC is certainly in the popular lexicon, and it isn't likely it will disappear any time soon.

The endurance is listed in Toshiba's slide (in PB), but we are unaware of how much overprovisioning they are using. I think the company could use a big dollop of overprovisioning on QLC SSDs pretty easily, as it will be cheap. Marvell already has DRAM-less controllers in the works that support QLC NAND, and the fact that they are DRAM-less is pretty telling. They will be slow...about as slow as it gets, but very cost effective.

 

[ron baker]

S
surely 5bits (quin level cell?) is going too far 32 voltage states? they are going to have to amke each cell 1024bits and have a parity controller for each cell .. or ssds will become two tier storage in themselves dlc + mlc.

 

[LordConrad]

The only reason I felt comfortable enough to start using TLC drives was because of the increased endurance of 3D NAND. I would never use a planar NAND TLC drive and, barring another innovation like the move to 3D NAND, I don't see myself ever using a QLC drive either.

 

[mavikt]

Two of these 100GB in RAID-1 NAS would be a nice place for movies, music and pictues, wouldn't it?! Unless the prices of them will scale with current SSD price/capacity.
I wonder how long data can sit on the drives before rotting?

 

[13thmonkey]

For worm applications this is perfect, have an mlc or TLC for programs and os, and qlc for bulk storage, this won't be a drive for editing 4k film on, but for storing them you don't need endurance. Now just to get over the need for a backup else you'll be buying them in pairs.