Micron and Intel Announce 3D NAND Flash Co-Development To Push SSDs Past 10TB

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Micron and Intel Announce 3D NAND Flash Co-Development To Push SSDs Past 10TB

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 26, 2015 @09:38AM from the 10TB-can-hold-quite-a-few-home-movies dept.

MojoKid writes Both Micron and Intel noted in a release today that traditional planar NAND flash memory is reaching a dead-end, and as such, have been working together on 3D memory technology that could open the floodgates for high densities and faster speeds. Not all 3D memory is alike, however. This joint development effort resulted in a "floating gate cell" being used, something not uncommon for standard flash, but a first for 3D. Ultimately, this 3D NAND is composed of flash cells stacked 32 high, resulting in 256Gb MLC and 384Gb TLC die that fit inside of a standard package. That gives us 48GB per die, and up to 750GB in a single package. Other benefits include faster performance, reduced cost, and technologies that help extend the life of the memory.

93 comments

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Storage space isn't the problem. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 09:51 · Score: -1, Offtopic

I don't find the amount of storage to be a problem any longer. I do video editing, and even my 512 GB SSD is more than enough for that. The big problem I'm running into these days is my computer not even booting. I use Fedora Linux, which means I use systemd. If I have to reboot my computer, like after doing a kernel update, there's a good chance it won't boot again properly. Then I'll have to get out my ancient laptop running Windows XP, and google the Fedora mailing lists or bug reports until I find a fix. It's pretty sad that I have to use Windows XP just to get my modern Linux desktop working again!
Hardware just isn't a problem for me as along as the software I'm using is causing me so much grief. If I get a 750 GB SSD, or even a 2 TB SSD, thanks to this technology, it won't do me any good if I can't use it because my desktop won't start up!
1. Re:Storage space isn't the problem. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 09:56 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  Simple. Don't use SystemD! Get one of the BSD's.
2. Re:Storage space isn't the problem. by ChrisMaple · 2015-03-26 11:45 · Score: 1
  
  Keep more than one version of Fedora on your computer, in different partitions. I currently have F14, F17, and F20. Use multiple drives, so that worst case there are multiple boot drives available from BIOS. Keep a "Live CD" available on a USB flashdrive.
  
  --
  Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
3. Re:Storage space isn't the problem. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 12:24 · Score: 0
  
  You should dual-boot between Fedora and Slackware. Then you can solve your systemd problems by hacking your Fedora partition from Slackware.
  (or quit being a nitwit that beats the systemd dead horse joke)
4. Re:Storage space isn't the problem. by hairyfeet · 2015-03-26 13:20 · Score: 1
  
  ROFL...needing THREE installs of the same OS along with a LiveCD just to keep a working system thanks to systemd, while the other guy has to use XP just to Google for fixes for his "modern and new" 2015 Linux install? Yep, its soo ready for the desktop ha ha ha ha! Been saying for years, if you don' t demand better, hold asshat devs like Poettering's feet to the fire? Then you deserve the half baked mess that you get. No wonder The Hairyfeet Challenge is celebrating its eighth year unbeaten!
  As for TFA....how are the MTBF for 3D NAND? Did they manage to lick the "controller fails and takes out the drive" issue? Because while the speed of SSD is great one thing that royally blows ass is how you get fuck and all for warning before they shit themselves and die. I'm sure some jackhole will pop up with some anecdote (while neglecting to mention he dropped the thing) about "his HDD just died" but since I've done more HDD replaces than many here have had home cooked meals and by and large? You get plenty of warning with HDDs. You get write errors, you get noise, stutters, they will usually give you enough time to get your data off...not SSDs, I thought Intel had the right idea by giving them a finite lifespan but on that big SSD shootout the Intel one did the "no BIOS/UEFI" brick bit just like the rest.
  I mean as much money as they are spending increasing size, is it too much to ask to have a little "failover" chip that just leaves the drive in a read only state so you can get your stuff off if it shits the bed?
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
5. Re:Storage space isn't the problem. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 13:23 · Score: 0
  
  Systemd isn't the problem. You are.
  Go away, troll.
6. Re:Storage space isn't the problem. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 13:24 · Score: 0
  
  ZFS Root is worth it alone.
  My Dell M6800 can hold 4(!) hard drives: 2 Hard drives, +1 replacing the DVD, +1 mSATA.
  4x drives in a RAIDz provides pretty decent redundancy in a mobile workstation.
7. Re:Storage space isn't the problem. by Billly+Gates · 2015-03-26 14:06 · Score: 1
  
  Actually Hairy this was tested .
  Ssds are more reliable than platters these days. My 2012 Samsung pro in raid 0 still functions. There is a free tool out there that gives you health and life of a ssd reported I had til 2025 before it goes kaput. Times are changing and sand force is gone.
  Try it ... and system D guy was troll and off topic trying to start a flameware. SystemD and other init replacements were hip since 2005 when Apple did theirs ... until last summer when sys admins who find nothing wrong with dozens of 200 line programs all linked created thousands of threads upon startup felt threatened
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
8. Re:Storage space isn't the problem. by fnj · 2015-03-26 15:22 · Score: 2
  
  I built a FreeBSD 10.1 server with a single root ZFS pool consisting of seven 3 TB drives in RAID-Z3, including a small 7-way mirror of swap space. The process was completely pushbutton using the install UI. Partly I did it just to explore how much difficulty the install might be (no difficulty whatsoever), but the setup has proved very effective in use.
  It was pretty cool rerouting some of the SATA connections randomly (even to a different HBA) as a test, and removing two of the drives as a test, and having it still boot to a fully operating state and run fully usably with no intervention or drama at all.
  After extensive experimentation and production use, the only real criticism I have that is just head-scratchingly stupid and lame is that there is no sensor capability, and no one in development seems to think there is a glaring problem with its omission. Coretemp works beautifully, but you can't detect fan rotation or access any voltage or secondary temperature sensors.
9. Re:Storage space isn't the problem. by fnj · 2015-03-26 15:28 · Score: 1
  
  Simple. Don't use SystemD! Get one of the BSD's.
  At least spell ir right, you guys, so you don't look like idiots. It's systemd, not "SystemD". Sheesh! Does anyone write FtpD or HttpD or SmtpD?
10. Re:Storage space isn't the problem. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 18:44 · Score: -1
  
  Uuuh, what do we have here, a butthurt Linux cheerleader.
11. Re:Storage space isn't the problem. by Celarent+Darii · 2015-03-26 21:07 · Score: 1
  
  For monitoring motherboard stuff:
  http://www.freshports.org/sysutils/healthd/>systutils/healthd
12. Re:Storage space isn't the problem. by fnj · 2015-03-26 23:53 · Score: 1
  
  Thanks for the tip. I'll check it out. The proper URL is http://www.freshports.org/sysutils/healthd/. Unfortunately all the links at that page are now dead and "there is no maintainer for this port". I will try it, with trepidation, though all other sensors related ports for FreeBSD appear to be garbage.
13. Re:Storage space isn't the problem. by GCsoftware · 2015-03-27 01:46 · Score: 2
  
  Yeah spell it right - it's 'systemd'. Looks like an OK operating system, shame it doesn't have a decent init.
14. Re:Storage space isn't the problem. by hairyfeet · 2015-03-27 03:45 · Score: 1
  
  Sigh...please read TF post before replying...kay? I did NOT say that SSDs were unreliable, hell I use 'em myself as boot drives (because I don't give a shit if I lose the OS, won't be my first Windows install after all) my problem is they tend to fail unexpectedly. And that test? Yeah I'm afraid that means jack and shit, after all if you had run a test on Maxtor and only ran it on 2002 and 2004 it would have shown they were very reliable, 2003 was when they had the bad batch.
  Look nothing you are saying changes the fact that its NOT the flash that fails by and large ITS THE CONTROLLER and with current designs if the controller fails? You boot up and no BIOS or UEFI detection. please don't take MY word for it, Google "SSD no BIOS detection" and just replace BIOS with UEFI after the first pass and see for yourself this is NOT an isolated incident and unless you have own EEPROM reader and the skills to rebuild the array? You be fucked son.
  At the end of the day the absolute worse case scenario? I spend an hour building a clean box and switch the platters long enough to get the data, i did that not too long ago for a woman who had the only copies of pics of her recently deceased nephew on a drive that fried its electronics, if that would have been SSD? It would have cost her thousands if she could have even found somebody to do it. Its 2015 man, there is no damned reason they couldn't put a backup controller that turns the drive into a WORM medium and alerts the user, no reason at all.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
15. Re: Storage space isn't the problem. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-27 07:25 · Score: 0
  
  *whoosh*
  The problem isn't the write cycles reaching the end (what the ssd life estimator is doing), it's the frigging controller dying. The life span is far beyond the average consumer and really an issue for servers with 24/7 loads.
  The data is still perfectly in the bga's, but no consumer is going to remove those bga's, destroy a good ssd, and transplant the data to use with working controller.
  You can't estimate when the controller dies. It just does, and it pisses people off to no end.
  That is why parent said there is a need for a way to reach out the data bypassing the broken controller.
not the problem by slashmydots · 2015-03-26 09:57 · Score: 1, Redundant

A monkey could configure a 10TB array right now and power isn't exactly a problem. Putting it in a single drive is neat but the #1 problem with SSDs right now is price. The prices are horribly inconsistent day to day. They can make a 2Tb or 10Tb or 10000TB drive for all I care but what I need for my many, many custom builds at my shop is a low cost 240-256GB SSD.
Once in a while I can get a $90 silicon power S60 240GB SSD. Crucial's MX and BX series hit that low once in a while. All others are perpetually above $100 which is too expensive for a Facebook wonder do-nothing PC with a pentium 4th edition and 4GB of RAM. Some people do reasonably go past 120GB too so I do typically want to use 240GB drives. I blame smartphones' cameras and itunes' automatic backup of ipads and other devices.
1. Re:not the problem by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 10:44 · Score: 0
  
  Price doesn't bother me. The performance is amazing so they're worth the money, but the limited life is what makes the big SSDs still unusable for most applications. My Samsung 840 EVO 1 TB life is already down by 12% after just a month!
  $ smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep Wear 177 Wear_Leveling_Count 0x0013 088 088 000 Pre-fail Always - 136
  I am not looking forward to spending another $750 in about a year after the SSD wears-out.
2. Re:not the problem by LordLimecat · 2015-03-26 10:45 · Score: 1
  
  For a do-nothing pc you should be using any of the hundred sub-$60 128GB ssds.
3. Re:not the problem by beelsebob · 2015-03-26 10:51 · Score: 2
  
  You have a faulty SSD if you've got to 12% worn in 1 month. For a non-faulty 840 EVO 1TB that's a physical impossibility. 12% wear would imply that you've written more than 36TB to the drive already, which implies writing continuously at 833MB/s, which is higher than the drive's maximum write speed.
4. Re:not the problem by LordLimecat · 2015-03-26 10:54 · Score: 1
  
  What are you doing that's writing ~100-200TB / year?
5. Re:not the problem by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 10:59 · Score: 0
  
  I'd replace the drive long before it drops from 88 to 0! On the ~150 Samsung 840 drives I've had to replace, while many lasted a few months after hitting zero for the wear leaving count, the rate of failure increased greatly after it got down to twenty. That means you only have about seven months of life left. I love the speed, but the increased maintenance hassle makes it less worth it.
6. Re:not the problem by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 11:19 · Score: 0
  
  Centralized remote syslog server that also feeds to Elasticsearch which indexes the syslog entries for reporting and searching. After daily aggregate reports are done, a week later the entries are moved to spinning rust and only the canned reports stay on SSD. With the way Lucene works and our indexing is setup, a 100 byte syslog entry can easily turn into 2k of index. The canned reports now only take a tenth of the time they took before we added the five Samsung drives and the historical reports load even faster than that, but the drives are just wearing out too quickly for comfort.
7. Re:not the problem by Christian+Smith · 2015-03-26 12:15 · Score: 2
  
  Centralized remote syslog server that also feeds to Elasticsearch which indexes the syslog entries for reporting and searching. After daily aggregate reports are done, a week later the entries are moved to spinning rust and only the canned reports stay on SSD. With the way Lucene works and our indexing is setup, a 100 byte syslog entry can easily turn into 2k of index. The canned reports now only take a tenth of the time they took before we added the five Samsung drives and the historical reports load even faster than that, but the drives are just wearing out too quickly for comfort.
  So you're simply using the wrong drives. The 840 EVO is a consumer level drive. You want a more enterprise like drive like Intel 3700, which is warranted for 10 drive writes per day for 5 years. It costs more, sure, but you can surely justify the cost based on the performance and reliability benefits.
8. Re:not the problem by guruevi · 2015-03-26 12:43 · Score: 2
  
  You're doing it wrong! Unless you don't care about data loss and calculated out that replacing the EVO's every few months is actually a cheaper option compared to a decent SLC (Intel, STEC, ...) or even RAM SSD over the lifetime of your server, then I would recommend re-examining your setup. SLC's are not only faster, but they're a heck more reliable. If you just care about speed on a single box, get a PCIe based SSD. Desktop drives for this kind of setup is asking for trouble.
  I still have a set of 32GB SLC (Intel X-25-E) from 2009 which have digested several PB worth of data in their lifetime as well as a number of OCZ Deneva's with the same workload. Probably the best investment possible.
  
  --
  Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
9. Re:not the problem by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 13:27 · Score: 1
  
  Oh please. I've replaced several hundred worn-out consumer SSDs in servers. They wear-out quickly. There's a reason Dell charges $4,998.78 for their write intensive 800 GB SSDs. Poor quality drives like the Samsungs or Intel consumer models often wear-out in less than a year. The Dell drives cost ten times as much as the Samsung, but they're worth it since the Samsungs wear-out so quickly. If there wasn't a problem with the Samsung garbage wearing out so damn quickly, why would anyone ever pay ten times as much to get something that doesn't wear-out so quickly?
10. Re:not the problem by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 14:07 · Score: 0
  
  You're right, but enterprise SLC drives are ten times the price! Also, I don't have enough empty slots to put in a bunch of much smaller SLC drives to get the capacity I need.
  > decent SLC (Intel...
  Are sure Intel still makes larger SLC drives? newegg.com and several other vendors I checked don't carry them. The Intel 720 that's $1,100 for 300 GByte is an eMLC rather than an SLC. The biggest Intel SLC I could find on newegg is 24 GB. I'd need 83 of them to equal the space on my pair of Samsung EVO drives. That's without even considering the space wasted for RAID.
  > 32GB SLC (Intel X-25-E) from 2009 which have digested several PB worth of data
  That's awesome. The four year-old mSATA Intel SLC in my build server gets hammered constantly, and it is still going. They're great, but I just need more two orders of magnitude more space.
11. Re:not the problem by Billly+Gates · 2015-03-26 14:10 · Score: 1
  
  Nope benchmarks show superior reliability
  Likely your drives didn't wear out. No trim in raid with anything under Windows 2012 without intel RST driver screwed up wear leveling as it lost track of virtual rewrites
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
12. Re:not the problem by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 15:34 · Score: 0
  
  why would you even consider putting an SSD in a do-nothing PC of such lowend spec? it isn't going to magically make the system perform fast beyond faster boot times.
13. Re:not the problem by bloodhawk · 2015-03-26 15:35 · Score: 1
  
  So your doing enterprise level syslog aggregation and archiving on consumer level hardware? really?
14. Re:not the problem by fnj · 2015-03-26 15:37 · Score: 1
  
  $ smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep Wear
  177 Wear_Leveling_Count 0x0013 088 088 000 Pre-fail Always - 136
  Please post also the bytes written data from smartctl so we can get some idea of what crazy torture you are or are not subjecting it to.
15. Re:not the problem by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 15:58 · Score: 0
  
  WTF! you use consumer grade drives and then comment you shop at newegg for your enterprise level equipment? seriously your whole story stinks, either you are full of shit with how much data you collect from syslogs or you have one of the most incompetent IT departments on the planet.
16. Re:not the problem by sonicmerlin · 2015-03-26 18:26 · Score: 1
  
  Then buy a Samsung 850 Evo Pro. The 3D NAND is at 40 nm and is extremely long-lasting.
17. Re:not the problem by jones_supa · 2015-03-26 19:01 · Score: 1
  
  A good consumer drive could take it just fine.
18. Re: not the problem by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 22:28 · Score: 0
  
  Just running Windows will thrash disks. How does sd handle constant paging?
19. Re: not the problem by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 22:56 · Score: 0
  
  No worries there.
20. Re:not the problem by halltk1983 · 2015-03-27 01:29 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, there is. Dual SAS channels, allowing the disc to be controlled on independent control channels from redundant controllers, allowing improved uptime.
  
  --
  Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
21. Re: not the problem by halltk1983 · 2015-03-27 01:33 · Score: 2
  
  Get more RAM and disable the page file. I did that years ago, and it works just fine. I've had *one* OOM blue screen in 4 years, and that was because I was seeing how much I could open at the same time.
  
  --
  Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
22. Re:not the problem by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-27 02:11 · Score: 0
  
  I'm not the original AC, but I'm in a small shop & get a lot of our stuff at Newegg, and yes, sometimes use consumer drives in servers. If it does the job for the right price, why not? That said, certainly the EVO Pro is worth it over the EVO.
23. Re:not the problem by Coren22 · 2015-03-27 02:15 · Score: 1
  
  Just to counter this. I have an Intel I bought on 7/23/2009 (looked it up on Newegg) that I don't use much as it is only 32 GB. I also have a 120GB Intel (with a Sandforce controller) from 8/25/2012 that is still working just fine. Intel and Samsung are on the top end of SSDs as they own their own fabs, so don't badmouth without actual evidence.
  
  --
  APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
24. Re:not the problem by Coren22 · 2015-03-27 02:19 · Score: 1
  
  You want a more enterprise like drive like Intel 3700, which is warranted for 10 drive writes per day for 5 years
  Is that 10 a typo?
  
  --
  APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
25. Re:not the problem by Coren22 · 2015-03-27 02:23 · Score: 1
  
  What is wrong with Newegg? They tend to have the most selection of computer hardware around. Sure you could buy from Ingram Micro, but there is no guarantee that they have any larger selection, and you will pay more.
  
  --
  APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
26. Re: not the problem by Coren22 · 2015-03-27 02:25 · Score: 1
  
  On top of what Halltk says, if you install Windows 7 and above to a SSD, it auto optimizes for SSD (no page file, turns off defrag, and I am sure other optimizations)
  
  --
  APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
27. Re:not the problem by ejasons · 2015-03-27 06:02 · Score: 1
  
  Is that 10 a typo?
  
  Entire drive capacity writes...
28. Re:not the problem by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-27 10:07 · Score: 0
  
  WTF! you use consumer grade drives and then comment you shop at newegg for your enterprise level equipment?
  STFU or tell us where to get an Intel made SLC SSD with a capacity larger than 32gb.
  Intel's own SSD sales page is of no use and generally points to either newegg or amazon: http://www.intel.com/buy/us/en...
  The Intel X25-E comes can be found in 64gb size ($250 on amazon). The GP would need 83 24gb drives to equal his 2x Samsung EVO drives (I'm guessing he has 2x 1tb EVO's). That'd be 32x 64gb drives. Can we get that number down to a reasonable size using SLC drives? I don't know if you can right now, and I don't know if it's worth it if you can manage to shuffle stuff around in smart ways (ex. for a syslog server, write to the SLC drives, roll onto EVO's, long term onto HDD's, backups on HDD and/or TAPE and/or glacier/etc).
29. Re:not the problem by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-27 11:41 · Score: 0
  
  > bytes written
  $ smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep LBA 241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 37834055565
  I think that corresponds to 3 Tbytes which really isn't that much data for a 1 TB drive. SSDs really are crap and die quickly.
30. Re:not the problem by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-28 05:14 · Score: 0
  
  LBAs written are in sectors (512 bytes), so about 37B sectors or 19 TB. The Flash has written (actually erased) about 136TB, so you are running with a wear amplification of about 7:1. If the drive is full, this is not too surprising. The way to get Flash to last longer is to leave free space so that the FTL has room to work in.
31. Re:not the problem by LordLimecat · 2015-03-29 09:31 · Score: 1
  
  I might suggest that you need to not be expecting a consumer SSD to hold up to an enterprise workload.
32. Re:not the problem by LordLimecat · 2015-03-29 09:41 · Score: 1
  
  He could have gone with the Samsung "Pro" drives, which have held out to 2PB of data writes before croaking; they at least pretend to not be consumer drives.
33. Re:not the problem by fnj · 2015-04-03 14:11 · Score: 1
  
  LBAs written are in sectors (512 bytes), so about 37B sectors or 19 TB. The Flash has written (actually erased) about 136TB, so you are running with a wear amplification of about 7:1. If the drive is full, this is not too surprising. The way to get Flash to last longer is to leave free space so that the FTL has room to work in.
  Nailed it. This drive is being tortured. 19 TB in one month is 630 GB (almost 2/3 of full drive capacity) written per day, or 7 MBps averaged 24x7, on a budget drive.
  Over-provisioning at the outset would have helped a lot, but that is still a hell of a big data load.
Tipping point? by BenJeremy · 2015-03-26 09:57 · Score: 3, Interesting

Hopefully this also sees a reduction in the cost of SSDs to bring them closer in line with platter drives, which have only just started dropping into the $30/TB range once more (since the Thai floods gave manufacturers their own Sumitomo excuse to drive up prices).
If the market had progressed more realistically, platter drives would be $15/TB and we'd already have consumer-level 10TB drives, but Seagate and Western Digital took a breathing period to reap profits, allowing SSD technology to start playing catch-up. ...not that SSD makers are off the hook... they've gone to smaller fab processes that shortened the life of NANDs and also have kept prices from falling at a reasonable rate, too.
I think we are two or three breakthroughs from reaching parity on cost per byte for platter and solid state tech, at which point, platter technology will likely become a very small niche market.
1. Re:Tipping point? by mlts · 2015-03-26 10:47 · Score: 1
  
  Platter technology will end up being pushed to the NAS/SAN, which is why WD is making their red line of drives.
  Perhaps HDDs, now that speed and capacity are secondary, they will start evolving down the path of reliability, perhaps replacing tape as an archival medium.
  NAS drives are going to be a big market, especially with devices like Apple's new MacBook with limited expansion capability, so people will use WiFi Direct hard drives as their main backup source, as opposed to USB drives. In this use, capacity is limited on the MacBook, and speed is limited, so drive makers (hopefully) will end up working on leapfrogging each other for reliability and security.
2. Re:Tipping point? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 11:15 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Chip fabrication tech and flash density is increasing at a rate far faster than spinning platter storage. At mass market scales, SSDs are going to win pretty soon because of simple BoM cost.
  Hard drives require a lot precision machining and assembly. Chip fabrication and PCB assembly scales much better, and is much cheaper. It's the same pick-and-place followed by oven reflow that /everything/ else uses.
  Flash storage is going to win by size, logistics, power usage, and mechanical requirements. Why devote space in your device to a hard drive when a postage stamp sized module soldered down next to the SoC that powers your product is cheaper and smaller?
  SSDs are getting tiny already. Have you seen what's inside a modern SSD? A tiny board with 2-3 chips. Most of the inside of that 2.5" drive chassis is empty air. WIth intel talking about 750 gigs on something the size of your thumbnail.. Hard drives are done. Just done.
  Reliability is trivial too. Modern controllers with modern wear leveling algorithms let you sacrifice a little storage space to give you as much or as little reliability as you'd need, depending on your target market. Even if your flash cells are less reliable, the massive increase in density lets you devote more of them to wear leveling.
3. Re:Tipping point? by swb · 2015-03-26 11:47 · Score: 2
  
  I think major leaps of density will eliminate platters. Why bother with them at all with their ridiculously slow seek times, heat, power consumption? At high capacities they're more of a risk to data integrity due to slow array rebuild times and it takes dozens of them to equal the IOPS of flash. Even now platters are either useful for their high density as Tier 3 in a SAN or in large numbers to get IOPS.
  If there was a huge leap in flash densities I think they would get cheap enough that no one would bother, even if they were "unreliable" consumer MLC technology. Vendors could just double the extra flash used for recovery of bad cells and increase the endurance.
4. Re:Tipping point? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 13:32 · Score: 1
  
  A tiny board with 2-3 chips. Most of the inside of that 2.5" drive chassis is empty air.
  That's because of the mSATA format. You can already buy a 1 TB mSATA drive. On raw size alone you can fit 7.1 of those into the same space as a 3.5" hard drive.
  They just need to get the cost down. Storage solutions in the future will be trays of those chips in a 1U-4U form factor with fans in front and some CPU and networking connections. No more 'hot swap' hard drive 3.5" form factors, just swap an entire blade of SSD chips.
5. Re:Tipping point? by Billly+Gates · 2015-03-26 14:15 · Score: 1
  
  Where is cheaper and greater ram? We should be seeing 128 gb ram by now and ram drives and caches for faster performance
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
6. Re:Tipping point? by bloodhawk · 2015-03-26 15:30 · Score: 1
  
  64GB and 128GB ram is already available. You just don't see them at the consumer levels as their is no need or demand for them. a consumer benefits more from persistent storage, the advantages of ram drives is really non existent for all but a very small niche of users. Server side we have had this for a long time. The two servers I am currently playing with have 4TB of ram.
7. Re:Tipping point? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 15:35 · Score: 0
  
  Don't need to reach parity on cost, even at 2x the cost (but equal life) would eliminate all rotating storage, maybe even 3x. If these announcements are to be believed that is on the horizon, about two years out. Less space, less power, less vibration, all worth paying for. Oh, and did I mention 1000x faster?
8. Re:Tipping point? by jones_supa · 2015-03-26 23:10 · Score: 1
  
  Hard drives require a lot precision machining and assembly. Chip fabrication and PCB assembly scales much better, and is much cheaper. It's the same pick-and-place followed by oven reflow that /everything/ else uses.
  Good point.
Headline != Story by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 09:58 · Score: 0, Flamebait

The Headline states 10TB
The story peaks at 750GB.
An editor would spot the discrepancy.
1. Re:Headline != Story by edmudama · 2015-03-26 10:12 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  750GB per package.
  A single SSD may have anywhere from 1 to $alot of packages on the board, hence 10TB SSDs.
  
  --
  More data, damnit!
2. Re:Headline != Story by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 10:18 · Score: 0
  
  In Soviet Russia, discrepancy spots editor.
3. Re:Headline != Story by BronsCon · 2015-03-26 10:18 · Score: 1
  
  This. We already have >1TB SSDs, so clearly they're already using $alot of the current 750GB packages to do that.
  
  --
  APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
4. Re:Headline != Story by BronsCon · 2015-03-26 10:43 · Score: 1
  
  Damnit, that was <750GB.
  
  --
  APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
5. Re:Headline != Story by beelsebob · 2015-03-26 10:53 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  750GB is the amount they can fit one one chip package - i.e. what they could fit on a SD card. A typical gum stick SSD has several of these (usually around 5), hence the 3-4TB per gumstick estimate. A 2.5" drive will typically have more like 12-15 of them, hence the 10TB estimate.
Why SSD in a "do-nothing" PC ? by perpenso · 2015-03-26 10:22 · Score: 2

All others are perpetually above $100 which is too expensive for a Facebook wonder do-nothing PC with a pentium 4th edition and 4GB of RAM.
Why use an SSD in such a do-nothing PC? If you can't go with a regular HD try a hybrid SSD-HD. Last I looked a hybrid with 1 TB HD and 8 GB SSD was under $80.
1. Re:Why SSD in a "do-nothing" PC ? by mlts · 2015-03-26 10:26 · Score: 1
  
  Had a similar choice when giving a laptop to a relative. I went SSD instead of SSHD because SSDs are physically more resistant to shock.
  However, if given the choice with a desktop... I'd probably still use SSD, just because when I delete a file and fstrim the drive, the file is -gone- for good, since the drive controller will come around, write "1"s to all the pages that file used and call it done. Of course, keeping good backups when using SSDs is wise, just due to this exact thing.
2. Re:Why SSD in a "do-nothing" PC ? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 11:19 · Score: 0
  
  I delete a file and fstrim the drive, the file is -gone- for good
  Why is this an important feature? Are you worried that your wife will see your porn?
3. Re:Why SSD in a "do-nothing" PC ? by RobinH · 2015-03-26 12:51 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I have upgraded 4 computers from HDD to SSD's since Christmas. They were all from 2 to 5 years old, and all of them run like they're a brand new computer. They boot amazingly fast, and they launch programs really fast. Compiling is much, much better too. I wouldn't ever go back to a rotating hard drive for anything other than long term archival storage now. Maybe I'd do a hybrid drive, but really around $100 or so for 240GB is a really nice sweet spot at the moment.
  
  --
  "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
4. Re:Why SSD in a "do-nothing" PC ? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 13:27 · Score: 0
  
  It never hurts to be secure.
5. Re:Why SSD in a "do-nothing" PC ? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 14:33 · Score: 0
  
  Because silence
licensed from Toshiba? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 10:23 · Score: 0

Toshiba announced a similar idea of 3D stacking Nand's 3 or 4 years ago and they were also starting production shortly?
1. Re:licensed from Toshiba? by Em+Adespoton · 2015-03-26 11:44 · Score: 1
  
  Samsung has yet another 3D method they're using in PCIe boards, and those are already shipping in Apple's MacBook Pros.
  Competition is good... especially in this field!
2. Re:licensed from Toshiba? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 19:30 · Score: 0
  
  and those are already shipping in Apple's MacBook Pros.
  No, they're not.
  The flash used in the 2015 macbook and mbp SSDs is 64Gb/die 5th gen (aka "1Y nm") planar nand. Same as in the SM951. Not V-NAND.
mod 0Mp by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 10:32 · Score: -1

Creek, abysmal FrreBSDZ showed
i can't wait! by Gravis+Zero · 2015-03-26 10:52 · Score: 4, Funny

At this rate I'll finally be able to have my entire music collection on an iPod without having to compress my music in that terrible FLAC format. FLAC is a "lossless" format but you can totally hear which bits have been squished into the file for too long! That's why I decompressed all my files and let them sit for a week, so that the bits can breathe.

--
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
1. Re: i can't wait! by DigiShaman · 2015-03-26 13:06 · Score: 1
  
  You joke, but for some of my favorite music I don't mind leaving it in WAV format. I can afford the space now.
  
  --
  Life is not for the lazy.
2. Re: i can't wait! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 14:12 · Score: 0
  
  It's handy if you want to play them on the PC speaker on a 386!
3. Re: i can't wait! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-27 00:19 · Score: 0
  
  I'm down with retro.
4. Re:i can't wait! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-27 02:37 · Score: 0
  
  I used to carry around my entire music collection on an iPod, but I found that all the extra bits made it too heavy so I deleted half of it. A nice trade off I think.
5. Re:i can't wait! by smprather · 2015-03-27 03:52 · Score: 1
  
  This truly is the way "audiophiles" think. I'm still emotionally scarred from the crap I read in Audiophile magazine(s) while in high school. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
6. Re:i can't wait! by maestroX · 2015-03-27 21:17 · Score: 1
  
  Be sure to put the disk upright to avoid 1 bits accidentally falling over.
7. Re: i can't wait! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-28 04:31 · Score: 0
  
  This was my audio professional friend's response to my question about this:
  My question- Ok, I have to know- I realize you'd probably have fun playing with all this stuff- but is this just pretentious audio porn, or does any of it make any real difference at all?
  His answer-
  You probably don't want to hear it, but most of it makes some sense.
  It may make way less sense if you didn't "build the house around it" but just about everything about it looks well thought out. Even the room dimensions are practical -- 20'X30'X10' -- the last thing you want is a cubical room -- they set up standing waves like crazy. My last house had a huge frequency bump at 140hz that was entirely due to its oversquare dimensions. The cylindrical tube traps are how you deal with problems like that -- they absorb standing wave frequencies. Even better that it's built in the basement, that isolates it from outside noise.
  For listening, unless you have infinitely deep pockets, which this guy apparently does, it might not make much difference. But if you start recording and mixing music, you really need a neutral room. Most recording studio control rooms are set up by running white noise through the monitors, and using an accurate reference microphone and a RTA (real time analyzer) to map out frequency nulls and peaks -- then place room treatments, such as those tube traps, to flatten the response curve for the listener. For mastering, this is even more critical. Mastering labs begin to resemble high-end audiophile rooms.
  I've always been a bit skeptical about expensive cables -- not entirely, I will spend some money on interconnects, less so for speaker cabling. And I've been quite skeptical about audiophile power cables -- I don't really see much that an overbuilt AC power cord can provide. But in his case, it's not just the power cables, he's isolating and transforming the incoming AC power through transformers, which can regulate spikes in the voltage and minimize AC hum and interference. Same reason it's a good idea to use a UPS on computers.
  The air pressure system for the turntable is pretty extreme, but at the same time everyone with a turntable is trying to isolate it from the room -- especially in older houses with wood floors, the needle can jump from just walking across the room. So a lot of people wall-mount them, or suspend them from the ceiling. Another aspect of turntable design is that the motor built into the base can impart rumble to either the platter or the tone arm, or both -- it's hard to imagine better isolation than to suspend them on air.
  His speakers appear to be built on the same principles as a line array -- these came into PA design about 20 years ago, and are just about universal in PA design these days. They use cabinets stacked at precise angles such that wave forms from the different cabinets partially cancel those from speakers above and below, and can potentially offer a "near-field" listening experience even to those in the back of the hall.
  He didn't mention them, but even the black "blocks" on the floor that cradle the speaker and interconnect wires have a purpose. They keep the wires separate, which prevents inductance between the two cables, and potential crosstalk between the two channels.
  The diamond on the front of the cartridge is pure conspicuous consumption (and branding).
  When done right, systems like these can be pretty startling. I had a friend just out of high school (1975-78, pre-CD) who was an early tube audiophile -- he bought the original Altec-Lansing tube PA amps and speakers out of the Astrodome (rented a semi to haul them away). He had a system set up in his living room that ran two of those big monoblock tube amps for the highs and mids, and a freon-cooled Sansui solid state amp to run the bass. He had ribbon tweeters in pods on top of the speaker stacks. That system would image like crazy. You'd hear a tom hit, or a violin, come in seemingly behind you, to the right or left. Literally sounded like you were in the middle of
NAND flash is still expensive garbage... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 11:05 · Score: 1

More layers of NAND will just multiply the already steep cost. With process shrinks and MLC, flash endurance is falling sharply, and the bits literally leak out over time. In addition to being physically unreliable, the complex software stack required to transform block-erasable flash into useable storage does not inspire confidence, especially when virtually no drives guarantee data integrity with loss of power.
Far more interesting would be solid state storage based on memristors or phase-change memory. It would provide excellent performance and reliability without the complexity and limitations of flash-based SSDs.
1. Re:NAND flash is still expensive garbage... by Yunzil · 2015-03-27 02:17 · Score: 1
  
  With process shrinks and MLC, flash endurance is falling sharply, and the bits literally leak out over time.
  Uh, that's kinda the point of 3D. Instead of shrinking the cells, just stack them up. It's what Samsung did with their 850 Pros, which have a 10-year warranty. Besides, the TechReport torture test shows that reliability really isn't a problem for consumer-level devices.
Does this mean by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 11:14 · Score: 1

they are optimizing the design to be 3D printed in my living room? I'm already 3D printing my house, and the car in the garage, it would be nice if we could 3D print a complete house including the laptop in one pass?
1. Re:Does this mean by Em+Adespoton · 2015-03-26 11:46 · Score: 1
  
  Most microchips are 3D printed... you just wouldn't be able to afford the printer they use, and the chemicals involved would likely make living in your house a thing of the past..
2. Re:Does this mean by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 14:59 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, if we just assume that every manufacturing process is equivalent to 3D printing because we live in 3 spatial dimensions, we can then pretend that the 3D printers making plastic blobs at home will make microchips in the near future!
  Brilliant!
3. Re:Does this mean by Em+Adespoton · 2015-03-27 04:45 · Score: 1
  
  Whoosh?
I'm sticking with tape by OrangeTide · 2015-03-26 12:31 · Score: 1

Good old reliable tape. None of this fancy random access hard disk garbage that fails all the time, or complicated wear leveling flash nonsense.
Maybe something like core memory or bubble memory if I need some random access behavior.
I hear it's down to a penny per bit, only around 1200 megabucks for 10 gigabytes of Core memory.

--
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
1. Re:I'm sticking with tape by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-26 18:14 · Score: 1
  
  Tape is reliable, and core memory (in its modern incarnation as MRAM) provides immensely superior reliability and read/write performance. Unlike NAND flash, it offers true random access at a byte level granularity. NAND flash has its place, but it is the CD-RW of solid state storage technologies.
  NAND flash uses a pile of emulation software to fake hard disk semantics, and it degrades reliability and performance. Anything less than a quality enterprise SSD with capacitor has no chance of implementing such a complex piece of software correctly. Even then, those are only useful for transient data storage, and will forget everything if left on a shelf for a few years. It is not wise to use NAND flash without understanding its limitations, and for valuable data, a checksummed filesystem like ZFS and backups are a must.
  Personally, I'd rather pay more for a good quality SSD, and stick with (non-SMR) hard drives for bulk storage. Economically competitive SSDs will remain a dream for many years, and I wouldn't trust the commodity ones any more than inexpensive USB hardware. If ignorance and insults are your thing, feel free to learn by experience.
2. Re:I'm sticking with tape by Anonymous Coward · 2015-03-27 12:14 · Score: 0
  
  You didn't get the joke do you? He's "sticking with tape", I don't think there was anything in his post that pretended to be serious.
  But seriously, MLC NAND is good when you need something compact and disposable. Disposable, like pretty much every home computer built after 1995. SLC NAND is good if you need some MTBF guarantees for your industrial flash.
  The FTL in most consumer flash was bad 5-10 years ago (somewhat informed on this topic having written my own FTL for a few enterprise and mobile devices), but it seems like a genetic algorithm called "firmware piracy in Asia" has self selected and duplicated the best firmware. When you make USB and eMMC flash modules in China and Taiwan these days, you can usually get them to share the FTL with you because most of these suppliers don't believe in software IP. (I tend to agree with them)
I see your 900 TB by justthinkit · 2015-03-26 22:26 · Score: 1

I see your 900 TB and raise you to 2 freaking petabytes. Not quite a min raise, I realize...

--
I come here for the love