back to article Toshiba brings out terabyte laptop drive (yes), miracle enterprise-grade TLC

The storage Tardis effect continues: Toshiba has crammed 1TB into a thin disk drive and signed a license to use DenseBits technology in its flash memory products. The Tardis is Doctor Who’s time-travelling telephone kiosk which is somehow larger inside than outside. So it is with storage disk and NAND products which are able …

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  1. Danny 14

    no TLC SSDs? yes there are...

    Samsung have been running TLC drives for a while. I have one in fact. As for endurance.

    http://techreport.com/review/25559/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-200tb-update

    200Tb is more than i'll write onto my drive and although that particular TLC is remapping it still has a LOT of remap area to go.

  2. harmjschoonhoven

    600,000

    Toshiba(*) specifies "MTTF of 600,000 Hours" for their MQ01ABD100 (1000G in 69.85x100.0x9.5 mm) and "Reliability: Load/Unload 600,000 times" for their new MQ02ABF100 (1000G in 69.85x100.0x7.0 mm).

    Spot the difference.

    (*) pronounced with the stress on the second syllable.

  3. Aitor 1

    TLC modulation

    With modulation, the damage done to the cells and the capability to read from the cells improves by an order of magnitude AT LEAST.

    So, modulated TLC in theory could have better endurance than SLC.

    We shall see how good the first modulated chips are, buy my guess is that we are going to see mostly TLC drives in no time and when the modulation improves, QLC

  4. Geoff Lamb
    FAIL

    The Tardis?

    On The Register? Do you actually think that there would be a reader who would not know what the Tardis is?

    1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: The Tardis?

      Apparently so, given that it should be capitalised, as it's an acronym.

      GJC

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Got any inkling of a retail price? Or did my eyes skip what I thought was a serial number?

  6. Relgoshan
    Facepalm

    Reality check?

    A lot of the 7mm spinners are FRAGILE, I have seen dead units from being dropped less than two feet onto a pillow. A dual platter 7mm is as good idea as it sounds: PONY UP for an SSD or vet a laptop 2-3mm thicker IT WILL NOT KILL YOU.

    Samsung is using its own *exact same* schtick only called DSP (Digital Signal Processing), to reduce damage and improve read reliability from TLC. This pushes writes up from 1000+ cycles to an average around 3500+ in the 840, and supposedly nearer 4000+ in the EVO last I read. It has to do with TLC having a tricky 8 possible voltage responses, which as the cell is rewritten will creep a bit. Signal processing is used to compensate for attenuated voltages and prevent bad writes or misread states. Further, the EVO has up to 3GB of SLC write buffer per 250GB advertised capacity. In the company's opinion that SLC is nearly 200 times more durable and can serve as write combine buffer/large sequential write buffer for the life of the drive.

    Unless a magical technique such as microannealing inside each block becomes practical, TLC will be no possible threat to the usage of MLC and SLC for high availability I/O with heavy turnover. However the way it brings prices down, TLC may be very practical in next generation CHEAP laptop SSDs. Many of my service customers use less than 100GB currently, but would easily see benefit from improved startup times. The most useful thing from this article is "The Samsung 840 EVO may finally see real TLC based competition."

    M

    Unless 'magical' techniches

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