Here comes the TLC NAND avalanche

[Elixer]

Now that both Crucial/micron http://www.nasdaq.com/article/micro...-tlc-nand-flash-storage-analyst-blog-cm483237 and OCZ/toshiba http://ocz.com/consumer/company/new...ard-for-enterprise-customers-at-computex-2015 have stated that they will soon be shipping TLC NAND units (Samsung already had TLC NAND units), does that mean we won't be seeing many MLC based NAND units, like we have now, or will the usage of TLC NAND lead to some serious price cuts for 1TB+ SSDs?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

1GB+ SSDs?

GigaByte? 😛

(Sorry, had to.)

Anyways, I doubt there will be big price-cuts, not right away; the manufacturers will always seek a happy median between being price-competitive and padding their margins by lowering BoM costs.

I wouldn't expect 1TB SSDs to migrated down to the ~500GB class pricing until 256-gigabit packages have been around for a while.

 

[Elixer]

Heh, I was only off by 999GB's! 😳

 

[thilanliyan]

Here's to hoping prices come down.
However, isn't reliability a concern with TLC?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Here's to hoping prices come down.
However, isn't reliability a concern with TLC?

Not really.

Especially not if you make it on a big process node and stack it.

 

[redzo]

So no 3D TLC SSD's from Intel/Micron until late 2016? I was hopping for earlier. This shows how way ahead Samsung is regarding 3D NAND.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

So no 3D TLC SSD's from Intel/Micron until late 2016? I was hopping for earlier. This shows how way ahead Samsung is regarding 3D NAND.

Well . . . maybe it means that Intel and Micron have been careful enough to avoid releasing something that has slowly-degrading performance and needs a firmware update to make it "whole" again.

 

[Maxima1]

Well . . . maybe it means that Intel and Micron have been careful enough to avoid releasing something that has slowly-degrading performance and needs a firmware update to make it "whole" again.

3D stacking means you can go back in nm. Without it, TLC is in combination with lower nm NAND flash, so it will have less endurance.

 

[bradley]

So no 3D TLC SSD's from Intel/Micron until late 2016? I was hopping for earlier. This shows how way ahead Samsung is regarding 3D NAND.

I had initially read late 2015, but the article just says 2016. So I'm going to assume it means early 2016. And if Intel/Micron is to be believe, their 3D tech is going to blow the doors off the competition.

 

[redzo]

Yes it says early 2016, but I've got that's for TLC NAND production, so I assumed it is gonna take a while until storage products based on them hit the market.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Yes it says early 2016, but I've got that's for TLC NAND production, so I assumed it is gonna take a while until storage products based on them hit the market.

Well, however long the NAND production takes. Then ship via rail to factory that builds SSDs. Finally, add 30-60 days to get anything from Asia the US and onto store shelves. Boats and stuff.

If they're saying availability in 8 months, that probably means the designs are finalized, the prototypes are validated, and they're ready to go. Now it's just up to the subcontractors.