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Micron Releases 16nm-Process SSDs With Dynamic Flash Programming
Lucas123 writes: Micron's newest client flash drive line, the M600, uses its first 16nm process technology and dynamic write acceleration firmware that allows the flash to be programmed as SLC or MLC instead of using overprovisioning or reserving a permanent pool of flash cache to accelerate writes. The ability to dynamically program the flash reduces power use and improves write performance as much as 2.8 times over models without the feature, according to Jon Tanguy, Micron's senior technical marketing engineer. The new lithography process technology also allowed Micron to reduce the price of the flash drive to 45 cents a gigabyte.
Seems like the durability of flash cells decreases with every process shrink. It makes me wonder what the lifetime of this new stuff will be. A 10% reduction in cost is no bargain if it comes with a 10% reduction in lifetime.
In other news, Nanon is expected to release 16m ICs soon.
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Uh, NO.
Sixteen micron flash would be from the 1970s !
We are firmly in the nm range now, And 16 is pretty darn good. Intel is looking at 22nm for processors, so the memory guys can be a bit more aggressive due to the pattern regularity of memory.
To deal with the added write amplification, Tanguy said Micron increased the TRIM command set, meaning blocks of data no longer required can be erased and freed up more often
Did they mean "implemented" rather than "increased?" Or did they mean that they added something new to the TRIM command?
Making assumptions about how often trim might be used for any given workload only obscures the actual write endurance. Much like a 100GB capacity tape that's marked as 200GB because dome data that the manufacturer chose compressed 2:1 before being sent to the tape drive. Your mpeg movies aren't going to compress, so you'll be able to put 100GB of movies on that 100GB tape. The 200GB number is pure marketing BS.
At least with tapes, all if the companies use the same 2:1 bs factor, so they can be compared. There's no telling what assumptions Micron made about the use of trim, so there's no way to compare this drive's endurance to any other, or to estimate it's actual endurance for any real workload.
Do I really have to explain the joke to you?
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Yes; it's a "nerds" website.
And the native cell endurance has very little to do with it.
Erase block size is more important. As well as over-provisioning.
They don't go in to details, but if they can re-purpose a MLC cell as SLC after it has worn out too much to function as MLC, that's going to increase the drive endurance/decrease amount of required over provisioning.
Theres a lot of misconception here, so I'll try to address them.
Making assumptions about how often trim might be used for any given workload only obscures the actual write endurance.
TRIM has nothing to do with endurance. TRIM erases cells that are scheduled for erasure anyways; all TRIM does is try to time that erasure such that it occurs at a time that will not effect performance. What affects endurance is wear leveling, which is an entirely separate technique that does actually work. As capacity increases, wear-leveling ensures that the endurance of the drive as a total increases.
Much like a 100GB capacity tape that's marked as 200GB because dome data that the manufacturer chose compressed 2:1 before being sent to the tape drive. Your mpeg movies aren't going to compress, so you'll be able to put 100GB of movies on that 100GB tape. The 200GB number is pure marketing BS.
When tape manufacturers (or organizations, like the one behind LTO) cite a compression factor like 2:1, it is based on a standard body of data like the calgary corpus which includes both compressible and uncompressible data. This allows you to compare different technologies with different compression standards.
In the real world on LTO (which I assume you are referring to) I have seen compression factors ranging from ~1.5 to 2.5, so its not really accurate to call it marketing BS. They also always (as far as I have seen) mark the tapes something like "800GB/1600GB" with the subtext explaining that the smaller number is native, and that the entire thing is 2:1. Its not dishonest because the compression is part of the (well-defined) standard, and the native capacity is right next to the compressed capacity. Its also not the manufacturer doing this; those numbers are explicitly defined in the spec.
all if the companies use the same 2:1 bs factor,
Which begins to make sense when you realize that thats because LTO itself defines the compression factor of 2:1 based on calgary corpus.
There's no telling what assumptions Micron made about the use of trim
But, as we've established, TRIM has literally no effect on endurance, so its irrelevant what they might assume about it.
so there's no way to compare this drive's endurance to any other, or to estimate it's actual endurance for any real workload.
Not to be harsh, but there is if you actually took the time to understand the tech. They usually do provide endurance stats (ie, "100PB data endurance") and tests by Anandtech and others have often validated that as being realistic.
The article actually mentions 100 TB, not 100 PB (for the 128 GB). That's the equivalent of only about 100 full rewrites.
You mean ~1000 full rewrites. Hardware.info once tested this and got ~707 TiB until the first error (SMART: 5) out of a Samsung TLC 840 250 GB http://us.hardware.info/review....
Anecdotal yes, but nice to know it was 3 x bigger than the manufacturers specs.
Did you read rhe article? Micron claims their write endurance isn't a problem because of the way they implemented trim. That could make sense, if they avoided erasing and writing at all sometimes.
To clarify, 100PB is a number I pulled out of thin air. On reflection, you would not expect your SSD to do 100PB of data; II simply meant that a number IS usually provided, and that those numbers have been validated by multiple parties as generally being ballpark accurate.
> TRIM does impact endurance in that it CAN reduce write amplification
Yes. Like I originally said. Trim, by avoiding write amplification in some cases, increases endurance. However, it only helps for otherwise unused blocks, so the impact of trim is application dependent, as I said right in the subject line of my original post.
> TRIM has nothing to do with endurance. TRIM erases cells that are scheduled for erasure anyways; all TRIM does is try to time that erasure such that it occurs at a time that will not effect performance.
I guess you now realize that's wrong. The main purpose of trim is to avoid reading and writing pages that are unused anyway. The SSD doesn't need to reallocate trimmed blocks, because the OS isn't using that data anyway. Less physical reading and writing == more endurance.
> to say that TRIM fixes write endurance problems is highly misleading.
Which is pretty much the subject line of my original post.
> Not to be harsh, but there is if you actually took the time to understand the tech.
Now that you've agreed with what I said (trim affects endurance, but in an application dependent way), are you ready to admit YOU had forgotten exactly what the tech does? Maybe YOU would like to read the wikipedia article to refresh your memory?