Hynix 48-GB Flash MCP

Hal_Porter writes to let us know that the third-largest NAND chip maker, Hynix, has announced they have stacked 24 flash chips in a 1.4mm thick multi-chip package. It's not entirely clear from the article whether the resulting 48-GB device is a proof of concept or a product. The article extrapolates to 384 GB of storage in a single package, sometime. Hal_Porter adds: "It's not clear if it's possible to write to them in parallel — if so the device should be pretty damn fast. The usual objection to NAND flash as a hard drive replacement is lifetime. NAND sectors can only be written 100,000 times or so before they wear out, but wear leveling can be done to spread writes evenly over at least each chip. I worked out that the lifetime should be much longer than a typical magnetic hard disk. There's no information on costs yet frankly and it sounds like an expensive proof of concept, but it shows you the sort of device that will take over from small hard disks in the next few years."

Comments

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[pilgrim23]

"...that the lifetime should be much longer than a typical magnetic hard disk." ... I am curious about how that lifetime is determined. As a retro-computist hardwre buff I tinker with old hardware all the time. One example (of many): I have a Apple /// with 5mb (yeah 5mb) ProFILE drive. I think this beast was made in 1981 and it still runs just fine. I have a few slightly older hard drives too. I am not sure how an average lifetime is determined but I actually play with hardware that is over a quarter century old. If a NAND can last that long I will be impressed...