Kioxia Talks 7-bit per cell NAND

first make 4tb qlc more affordable

 

This is madness! When will it stop? I thought 4-bits was enough already.

 

SSDs are trying to catch up with HDDs density wise. As the speed difference is massive and everyone is transitioning to SSDs, obviously manufacturers want to give reasons for you to upgrade again and again.
Personally I don't mind all the evolution as long as they clearly state on the package what are the full specs of the drive. As long as it lives at least 5 years of heavy usage, sounds good!

 

Agreed - so long as SLC, TLC, and QLC are still in production, I don't mind going up to 7 bits if it means mass storage for cheap. Not everyone needs a lot of performance, they just need a lot of cheap capacity with high reliability.
SLC will remain good for those who need top performance.
QLC is good for budget drives that suit most PCs.
TLC is a nice in-between.
7-bit will be ideal for archiving and NASes.

 

That's impressive and all but what about:
- Speed penalty (write holes ahoy)
- Read/Write endurance.
- Price

I can see this tech making consumer high capacity 2230 M2s SSDs. 1TB exists for this but it's super expensive. This could make it super cheap. However, I hardly see the future of SSDs in high capacities. The prices are still prohibitive... 4TB is still 800$CAD and more. TLC or QLC... it doesn't matter.

 

I imagine they're going after the magnetic tape business with this

 

I imagine an endurance of 10 cycles if we are lucky with that 7bits

 

If it is possible to do it, then they should do it.
Every improvement is a step ahead.

The price is right for 4TB TLC (if mainstream), but it is lot less for 4TB in QLC: it is around 350 in 2,5" and 450 in M2.
At 800 you can have a 8TB from Samsung in QLC (with good life due to it's high volume Nand).

 

There is still a business with magnetic tape anyway lol

 

Is SLC still even made or put in large quantities on SSDs? It was prohibitive expensive.
MLC was my first SSD in 2013/14: at 256Gb it was the same price as a 2Tb HDD but the performance was there and I was happy for years.
Came 2019 I upgraded to my current 512Gb M.2 I think it's TLC, I notice the life dropping a bit faster (I'm at 89% health now) but I'm using it allot harder than my old SSD and that still lives on my mom PC.
QLC is a bit scary to be honest, but if the price comes down and density comes up I can't really complain. I think we're getting into diminishing returns territory pushing QLC forward, time will tell if they can improve reliability.

 

Seems SLC is no longer made. I guess with modern controllers, the added cost and lower storage density of SLC just isn't worth it anymore, but enterprise still uses MLC anyway. Most enterprises swap out drives after a certain timeframe regardless of the drive's actual lifespan or functionality, so, that likely made SLC prohibitively expensive.

For everyday users and for mission-critical servers, I agree. Where the data can be replaced or isn't at all important, QLC or higher is great to have. Redundant backups and secondary drives for media (assuming you can still rip/download the media in case of drive failure) are great uses for QLC or PLC. Most media, including games, don't really benefit from exceptionally fast drives, and they hardly see any read/write cycles for everyday usage. In some cases, the cells may only be written to once or twice for the entire life of the drive.