3D vert NAND, What is it and why should I care?

MonKENy

Platinum Member
Nov 1, 2007
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Im seeing Samsung released this. Is it really something beneficial or a marketing ploy?
 

MonKENy

Platinum Member
Nov 1, 2007
2,026
3
81
Jeez what am I, Blacklisted no one is answering any of the threads I posted? 150 views and no answer, I would have figured you nerds would have jumped on a tech question like this :D
 

CiPHER

Senior member
Mar 5, 2015
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3D NAND just means Samsung has invested in reducing cost of its NAND. Technically this could mean prices of SSDs would drop. But that is not going to happen; they will simply earn more per SSD because there is not all that much competition. The NAND market - like many others - has degraded into an oligarchy where only a few really big players dominate the market. They will try not to compete too much with each other, unleashing a potential price war as has happened several times with DRAM.

Besides, Samsung is the SSD manufacturer that sells TLC SSDs for the price of MLC SSDs, and sometimes even more than this. They also lack power-safe capacitors which further lower the manufacturing cost. So they should be at least 30-40% cheaper than competitors like Crucial/Micron.

But in reality, the price is not determined by the technical quality, but the market penetration and consumer binding power. The marketing has done its job so that consumers focus on MB/s and other high numbers, which are not all that interesting because the lowest number of 20MB/s 4K performance is what makes SSDs really fast. But it has resulted in Samsung gaining market share and basically becoming the new OCZ. At least their SSDs don't have up to 50% failure rate like OCZ used to have with models like the OCZ Octane. Their SSDs are very decent, but seriously overpriced and overhyped.

That the answer you wanted? :D
 
Feb 25, 2011
16,969
1,600
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NAND is made with transistors at a certain size. 20nm or less is typical. Smaller production nodes (smaller transistors) means more NAND in the same space, more NAND per wafer, higher capacity drives, etc., but it also means shorter lifespan, and often translates to lower performance. Smaller node sizes are also usually more expensive to fabricate.

3D NAND (or VNAND) is built at a larger production node (40 or 45nm, I forget which) and then essentially stacked on top of itself. So you get as much or more MB of storage from the same size package, without the disadvantages of the higher-density process. It's just taller. And probably generates more heat or something - there's always a drawback.

This has nothing to do with SLC, MLC, or TLC, which refers to the the number of bits stored in each cell, and is independent of the node size. (TLC stores more data in the same amount of NAND, but is more error-prone and slower as a result.) In particular, TLC NAND made on the smaller node sizes suffers from a significant performance and endurance (write cycles) drop, which TLC VNAND alleviates.

It also allows Samsung to keep building profitable products on older, less expensive process nodes.

Important reading:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7237/samsungs-vnand-hitting-the-reset-button-on-nand-scaling

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5067/understanding-tlc-nand/

Intel and Micron have teamed up to introduce their own VNAND tech, but I don't know if it's in any shipping products yet. It beats the pants off of trying to charge less and less money for increasingly error-prone NAND made on increasingly small and correspondingly expensive process nodes.

In other words, SLC VNAND would be the shiznit.
 
Last edited:
Feb 25, 2011
16,969
1,600
126
Jeez what am I, Blacklisted no one is answering any of the threads I posted? 150 views and no answer, I would have figured you nerds would have jumped on a tech question like this :D
Me was in garage. Me have many tools. Me like things go *vroom*.
 

MonKENy

Platinum Member
Nov 1, 2007
2,026
3
81
3D NAND just means Samsung has invested in reducing cost of its NAND. Technically this could mean prices of SSDs would drop. But that is not going to happen; they will simply earn more per SSD because there is not all that much competition. The NAND market - like many others - has degraded into an oligarchy where only a few really big players dominate the market. They will try not to compete too much with each other, unleashing a potential price war as has happened several times with DRAM.

Besides, Samsung is the SSD manufacturer that sells TLC SSDs for the price of MLC SSDs, and sometimes even more than this. They also lack power-safe capacitors which further lower the manufacturing cost. So they should be at least 30-40% cheaper than competitors like Crucial/Micron.

But in reality, the price is not determined by the technical quality, but the market penetration and consumer binding power. The marketing has done its job so that consumers focus on MB/s and other high numbers, which are not all that interesting because the lowest number of 20MB/s 4K performance is what makes SSDs really fast. But it has resulted in Samsung gaining market share and basically becoming the new OCZ. At least their SSDs don't have up to 50% failure rate like OCZ used to have with models like the OCZ Octane. Their SSDs are very decent, but seriously overpriced and overhyped.

That the answer you wanted? :D

NAND is made with transistors at a certain size. 20nm or less is typical. Smaller production nodes (smaller transistors) means more NAND in the same space, more NAND per wafer, higher capacity drives, etc., but it also means shorter lifespan, and often translates to lower performance. Smaller node sizes are also usually more expensive to fabricate.

3D NAND (or VNAND) is built at a larger production node (40 or 45nm, I forget which) and then essentially stacked on top of itself. So you get as much or more MB of storage from the same size package, without the disadvantages of the higher-density process. It's just taller. And probably generates more heat or something - there's always a drawback.

This has nothing to do with SLC, MLC, or TLC, which refers to the the number of bits stored in each cell, and is independent of the node size. (TLC stores more data in the same amount of NAND, but is more error-prone and slower as a result.) In particular, TLC NAND made on the smaller node sizes suffers from a significant performance and endurance (write cycles) drop, which TLC VNAND alleviates.

It also allows Samsung to keep building profitable products on older, less expensive process nodes.

Important reading:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7237/samsungs-vnand-hitting-the-reset-button-on-nand-scaling

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5067/understanding-tlc-nand/

Intel and Micron have teamed up to introduce their own VNAND tech, but I don't know if it's in any shipping products yet. It beats the pants off of trying to charge less and less money for increasingly error-prone NAND made on increasingly small and correspondingly expensive process nodes.

In other words, SLC VNAND would be the shiznit.

Awesome. Together you both answered my question. Ill skip the vnand for now and save the $