back to article Flash dead end is deferred by TLC and 3D

The arrival of a flash dead-end is being delayed by two technologies, both involving the number three – three-level cell (TLC) flash and three-dimensional (3D) flash – with the combination promising much higher flash chip capacities. As ever with semi-conductor technology, users want more data in the same space and faster …

  1. ZSn

    Eyesight?

    Am I seeing things or is this article a repeat word for word from a few days ago?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Eyesight?

      Yup. Someone MLC'd the article.

  2. Fenton

    Does Flash have to be smaller

    Unlike a processor where size does matter, is it really that important for storage where the form factor is largely irrelevant?

    Obviously it's cheaper to make chips at a smaller scale, but the cost of the Fabs is quite considerable.

    Why not have say 5x500GB flash chips in a single 2.5" enclosure with say a RAID 5 controller built in.

    That would give you a 2TB disk with some level of redundancy.

    1. toughluck

      Re: Does Flash have to be smaller

      And a write hole and performance hit when writing small blocks.

      If anything, Huffman coding on a block level or mirroring (RAID 1) would make more sense -- more expensive, but more reliable. It could still be cheaper than a very reliable cell.

    2. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Does Flash have to be smaller

      "is it really that important for storage where the form factor is largely irrelevant?"

      Yes. MicroSD being a case in point.

      FWIW there is a good deal of redundancy and error checking in SSDs. RAID5 would be regarded as sub-par (by a long shot) for good reason.

  3. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    Is size everything?

    Is the issue with flash memory the size of the chips, or the cost of them?

    Me, I think it's more the cost rather than the real-estate they take up in a server.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Is size everything?

      size = cost. more size = lower cost for same size.

      also we are posting on a dupe!

    2. Nigel 11

      Re: Is size everything?

      Cost.

      If they could be churned out really cheaply at some lower density, then they could be spread out over a larger form factor (such as the 5.25inch drive size) and stacked vertically as lots of circuit boards.

      (Which is what happened in the early days of RAM, and going back further, ferrite core memory).

      I wonder who really needs hundreds of terabytes of flash? Won't most folks be happy when a good flash cache solution is available as a front-end to lots and lots of good old spinning rust?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Is size everything?

        Spinning rust is fine until you drop the laptop holding the device.

        My laptop has 2TB of SSD. Most of it is for different VM's. now if there were 2TB drives rather than the 1TB ones (eg the Samsung EVO) than I could avoid lots of copying off to spinning rust USB drives.

      2. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Is size everything?

        "I wonder who really needs hundreds of terabytes of flash?"

        *Puts hand up. I have over a Petabyte of planetary surface imaging for starters (only one planet, other planetary sets are almost as big)

        Flash is _far_ more reliable than spinning rust(*). They _only_ reason we're not deploying all-flash is simply cost.

        (*) Apart from the obvious stuff, mechanical issues are exacerbated by putting several hundred drives in close proximity. No matter how hard you try, headseek vibration gets transmitted between drives and degrades performance - and the more seeking that goes on, the shorter a drive's life.

  4. frank ly

    Retro

    "MLC and TLC flash state is worked out from the amount of current that passes through the cell, with a charge level corresponding to a state."

    It's discrete analogue storage!

  5. Leeroy

    made of money

    'BY using this technology Intel anticipates a 10TB SSD coming in late 2016 early 2017.'

    Nice if you can afford it, at the current rates it would cost around £3500 for 10 TB of SSD and that's consumer level stuff.

    You can get 16TB of spinning rust for about £350 and spend the change on a nice controller and SSD or RAM cache.

  6. MatsSvensson

    nuff

    Surely one million billion terabytes, should be enough for anyone?

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