Toshiba, SanDisk Piloting 3D NAND That Doubles Previous Capacity

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Toshiba, SanDisk Piloting 3D NAND That Doubles Previous Capacity

Posted by timothy on Tuesday August 4, 2015 @02:20AM from the floppies-just-won't-cut-it dept.

Lucas123 writes: Under a joint development agreement, Toshiba and SanDisk have begun pilot production of a new 48-layer 256Gb NAND flash chip in a brand new fab in Mie prefecture, Japan. The new X3 chips, which double capacity from 16GB to 32GB over the previous product, are made with triple-level cell (TLC) flash compared with Toshiba's last multi-level cell (MLC) chip, which stored two-bits per transistor. The chips are expected to begin shipping in products next year. The companies plan to use the new memory in a wide number of products, including consumer SSDs, smartphones, tablets, memory cards, and enterprise SSDs for data centers, the companies said.

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Too bad by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 02:27 · Score: 0

Too bad that xpoint 3d will make this obsolete....
1. Re:Too bad by Guspaz · 2015-08-04 02:36 · Score: 1
  
  It will be a long time before that gets cheap enough to make flash obsolete, if ever. XPoint is going to be priced somewhere between enterprise flash and DRAM, which will put it at around ten times the price of consumer flash.
  If you gave me the choice between a 1TB SSD using NAND, or a 100GB SSD that had much more performance and endurance, I would take the 1TB SSD.
2. Re:Too bad by BenJeremy · 2015-08-04 02:58 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  XPoint won't be 10x the price - more like 3x~4x the price of consumer flash when it hits the market.
  The economy of scales will drive production up as it is incorporated into mobile devices and enterprise systems, which will also drive down price. XPoint is really more a matter of dooming platter drives to extinction, because the durability, power consumption, and speed will make it highly desirable in the enterprise market.
  I wouldn't be surprised if XPoint hits the "tipping point" of $200 for 512GB within 2 years of production, making it a prime choice for enthusiasts. Meanwhile, SSDs will continue to edge out platter as the "cheap" mass storage option for most consumers.
  We've seen Samsung 512GB drives hit $135 shipped to consumers recently. On Black Friday? Maybe we'll see them hit $100 or less. Once this 3D NAND hits full production, expect those prices to plummet. Meanwhile, platter drive makers are still trying to eke out every dollar with artificially propped up pricing, caught in a bit of a quandary... consumers rarely need more than 2TB, but the lowest you can produce a drive... any drive... is around $30; $/GB is not as scalable for platter drives as it is for SSDs (or XPoint), because you have a minimum BOM to fill before you can get a platter spinning and reading data, a baseline cost. Higher capacity drives can make you money, but consumers aren't buying them. Yes... you can sell $40 2TB drives all day long, but stockholders don't like that sort of crappy profit margin, so they continue propping up the price on a 5 year old disaster (Thai floods) as SSDs quickly play catch up on pricing with a far more compelling product. [Insert buggy whip story here]
3. Re:Too bad by bluefoxlucid · 2015-08-04 03:08 · Score: 0
  
  A 64GB NAND MLC flash chip trades for $1.60-$3.57. That means 1TB of MLC NAND costs about $57 at most ($25 at the least). This TLC uses half the die space to store the same amount of information--notably, it uses one multi-level transistor to store more data than one of some other type of multi-level transistor--so the production cost will be the same, but the first batches may have production problems cutting off a portion from usefulness, scaling costs (e.g. 50% fail, double the price). That means we could soon see $20/TB or cheaper NAND.
  
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4. Re:Too bad by pushing-robot · 2015-08-04 03:20 · Score: 1
  
  64Gb, not 64GB. Multiply your prices by 8.
  Still, even at ~$150/tb the use cases for spinning disks are steadily diminishing.
  
  --
  How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
5. Re:Too bad by mlts · 2015-08-04 03:22 · Score: 1
  
  XPoint 3D still has a ways to go with price (and the fact that it isn't out in the field yet.) It is still too expensive to be a 100% replacement for SSD, just like SSD is too expensive to replace HDDs everywhere.
  However, XPoint 3D does have its uses. Loading the core OS, application, and kernel come to mind as well as having a swap volume (pretty much the same concept as mainframe "external RAM" which was slower.)
6. Re:Too bad by Kjella · 2015-08-04 03:25 · Score: 1
  
  I think you got bits and bytes confused, pretty sure there's no 64GB NAND = 512 Gbit NAND to be had anywhere. So you can multiply all those prices by 8 for $205-457 for a TB. Even if it goes down to $160/TB that's still a lot more than HDDs.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
7. Re:Too bad by mlts · 2015-08-04 04:18 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  What HDD makers really need to do is stop focusing on price and make a line of drives that is made to be archival grade. For example, there was a line of drives with two read/write heads that worked in an active/active configuration.
  What might be even better would be to make a standardized, rugged drive cartridge case, similar to iMation's RDX. Something that can handle drops, be gripped easily by a tape silo's robotic mechanism, can handle tens of thousands of mounts/dismounts, has built in encryption, the ability to have WORM functionality (similar to late gen DLT drives where the cartridge can be formatted as normal or WORM), and so on. The drive can be presented either as a tape volume, standalone JBOD hard disk, or part of a RAID set (and inserted/ejected at the same time with 2-3 companions.)
  Moving HDD to a backup/archive use as opposed to primary storage will keep this technology relevant, as opposed to trying to fight with SSD (which is a better primary storage technology [1].)
  [1]: In all ways but recovery. An SSD goes bad, there is no way to recover the data, period.
8. Re: Too bad by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 04:36 · Score: 0
  
  Wrong. Get out an electron microscope and do it by hand. Stop being lazy!
9. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 04:42 · Score: 0
  
  An SSD goes bad, there is no way to recover the data, period.
  It all went so well up to this point.
  Unfortunately your last word indicates that you are simple minded and that I can't take anything of your post at face value.
10. Re:Too bad by jedidiah · 2015-08-04 06:02 · Score: 1
  
  Normal people aren't going to mess with a dead drive and serious enterprise customers are not going to have only one copy of their data.
  Ultimately, all that matters is cost. Speed is even somewhat of an optional thing with the larger archival volumes. Although you do need enough speed to make populating (or recovering from) an entire drive practical.
  I'm recovering a 4TB drive right now and it's moving as fast as all of the associated bottlenecks will allow.
  I don't care what the underlying tech is. It just can't be so overpriced that I can't have a duplicate (or even a 3rd copy).
  Dying gracefully with some warning would be nice but is it's not a showstopper if that's missing. A few of my HDDs have given no notice or not enough.
  
  --
  A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
11. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 06:16 · Score: 0
  
  If you know how to figure out which electronics were located in a gate and which were not after they escape, by all means tell us.
12. Re:Too bad by larryjoe · 2015-08-04 06:39 · Score: 1
  
  The general idea that SSDs will gradually encroach on HDD markets is correct and has been happening, albeit at a somewhat slow pace. While predictions about the disappearance of HDDs have existed for almost the last ten years, units sales of HDDs still dominate and probably will for quite a few more years. Microdrives disappeared about a decade ago, but that has so far been the only HDD market to completely evaporate. SSD are increasingly gaining ground in low-margin markets, such as laptops, but even there, most laptops still ship with HDDs due to cost and/or capacity reasons. In the enterprise performance and archive/cold storage markets, HDDs dominate even more as SSD cost and cost/capacity won't catch up to that for HDDs for a while (possible a very long while).
13. Re:Too bad by jcdr · 2015-08-04 06:41 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe, maybe not. Detailed specification of a xpoint 3d final component has still to exists, while the 3D NAND is the continuity of a well know technology. I am particularly curious at the temperature effect on the xpoint 3d cells, because others "innovative" memory that exists today are not very good in this area.
14. Re:Too bad by Gondola · 2015-08-04 09:42 · Score: 1
  
  Or in a hybrid platter/XP3 or SSD/XP3 drive, like platter/SSD hybrid drives now.
15. Re:Too bad by cheesybagel · 2015-08-04 14:00 · Score: 1
  
  So far SSDs have only barely kept up with software bloat. They need more density.
16. Re:Too bad by cheesybagel · 2015-08-04 14:01 · Score: 1
  
  XPoint is less dense. A lot less dense. So it will be more expensive for GB.
17. Re:Too bad by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-06 01:21 · Score: 0
  
  SSDs are doing a very good job killing off the 15k RPM SAS drive market. Why setup a huge array of 15k RPM SAS drives, all short-stroked, when a RAID-1 of SSDs will outperform it, cost less, and consume a lot less power.
18. Re:Too bad by larryjoe · 2015-08-06 05:34 · Score: 1
  
  The HDD manufacturers are still making the 15k RPM SAS HDD. Why? Because you can't use cheap SSDs in the data center. So the enterprise SSDs we're talking about are several times more expensive than the laptop SSDs. Depending on the workload, cost per performance may or may not be better for SSDs. Because SSDs are mostly considered as a caching layer between DRAM and HDDs, the workloads tend be be write-heavy, which increases wear leveling overhead and impacts performance.
  So, will SSDs kill off the enterprise HDD market? Maybe, but it's not happening now or in the near term. Also, SSDs as a caching layer is itself pressured by DRAM, which is much more expensive but also much faster.
2 bits per transistor? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 02:31 · Score: 0

Let's hope Sun/Oracle will never get into the SSD market. They would introduce a per-transistor license or worse.
1. Re:2 bits per transistor? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 06:10 · Score: 0
  
  I would expect a per bit (including spares) license fee.
Will not buy TLC NAND by D.McG. · 2015-08-04 02:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

The data longevity of 3-bits per cell NAND is quite poor. MLC's 2-bits per cell still has me uneasy. Storing 1 of 8 voltage levels in an environment that leaks electrons over time is not for me. I'll wait for XPoint before upgrading my MLC SSD.
1. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by serviscope_minor · 2015-08-04 02:42 · Score: 2
  
  You know I thought you were wrong and that a Triple Level Cell had 3 levels per cell, storing about 1.6 bits. Apparently I was wrong. TLC despite standing for triple level cell apparently means in fact 8 levels per cell where as MLC (multi-level) is for 4 levels per cell.
  Whoever came up with these terms is nuts.
  
  --
  SJW n. One who posts facts.
2. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by Rockoon · 2015-08-04 02:45 · Score: 2
  
  Makes perfect sense to me. Maybe its because I understand binary.
  
  --
  "His name was James Damore."
3. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 02:47 · Score: 0
  
  Did you think SLC (single level cells) had 1 levels per cell, thereby storing 0 bits?
4. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by amorsen · 2015-08-04 03:03 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Did you think SLC (single level cells) had 1 levels per cell, thereby storing 0 bits?
  I own one of those. It reads zero in all locations.
  
  --
  Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
5. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by serviscope_minor · 2015-08-04 03:11 · Score: 1
  
  Makes perfect sense to me. Maybe its because I understand binary.
  How so? The cells have multiple voltage levels, they don't store binary. 3 levels is not the same as three bits.
  
  --
  SJW n. One who posts facts.
6. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by Kjella · 2015-08-04 03:53 · Score: 2
  
  Well, smaller process sizes also reduce write cycles. When they went from 2D to 3D they went back to a bigger process size with less defects due to all the layers. Though they had some controller/firmware issues the first 3D TLC NAND had more raw write cycles than state of the art planar MLC NAND. Of course now they're shrinking it again in the quest for even more storage, but the clock got a pretty good reset going from 1 layer to 48. Going from MLC to TLC is more of a variation that cuts write cycles to about 1/3rd for 50% more space, all other things being equal.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
7. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by Rockoon · 2015-08-04 04:36 · Score: 1
  
  3 levels is not the same as three bits.
  You had posted that you just discovered that it is, and now you are posting that it isn't. Make up your mind.
  
  AC poster is right. You must have thought that SLC stored 0 bits since it had only 1 possible "level."
  
  --
  "His name was James Damore."
8. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by serviscope_minor · 2015-08-04 04:55 · Score: 2
  
  You had posted that you just discovered that it is, and now you are posting that it isn't.
  Try actually reading what I wrote before being overcome with smugness. MLC can measure multiple (i.e. > 2) voltage levels on the floating gate transistor. The number of bits is the log_2 of the number of distinct voltage levels.
  Calling something with 3 BITS that has 8 LEVELS triple level is silly. Why not just call it 3 bit cell. SLC sort of made sense from an EE point of view as being able to store one level as distinct from ground, but 1 level distinct from ground (1 bit) does not make 3 levels distinct from ground 3 bits.
  
  --
  SJW n. One who posts facts.
9. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by fnj · 2015-08-04 04:58 · Score: 1
  
  The data longevity of 3-bits per cell NAND is quite poor. MLC's 2-bits per cell still has me uneasy. Storing 1 of 8 voltage levels in an environment that leaks electrons over time is not for me. I'll wait for XPoint before upgrading my MLC SSD.
  For pete's sake, MLC stands for multi-level cell, not four-state (two bit) cell. TLC is just a kind of MLC; it's not an either-or. TLC is eight-state (three bit). I realize we're kind of stuck with dumbed-down nomenclature, where MLC is used specifically for four-state MLC. Funny how I find wrong usage annoying.
10. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by Bengie · 2015-08-04 06:10 · Score: 1
  
  A research paper about Samsung VNAND had their TLC pegged between 5k and 60k write cycles, depending on how you tweaked the SSD for performance, but same density and less than a 3x difference in performance. VNAND is using a much larger processes while having greater densities. The larger process allows VNAND to have a lot more write cycles compared to regular TLC NAND. Of course the cycles will against get worse as the process shrinks, but VNAND inherently has more write cycles than NAND, even at the same process size. I assume this other implementation will be similar.
11. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 06:23 · Score: 0
  
  For pete's sake
  Since we're picking nits, Pete is a name that should be capitalized for Pete's sake.
12. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 06:27 · Score: 0
  
  How so? The cells have multiple voltage levels, they don't store binary. 3 levels is not the same as three bits.
  
  Flash cells store electrons in a trap (floating gate) and therefore ideally do not have a voltage level. Any minuscule voltage they have is unavoidable leakage and one of the primary design goals is to minimize this leakage. Even calling this leakage "voltage" is highly misleading because they are rare (days/weeks/months between) quantum tunneling events.
  
  What flash cells do have is a voltage differential threshold determined by the number of electrons within the trap. The field created by the differential when large enough will overcome the negative charge within the trap (defined by the number of electrons within it) and turn the gate above the trap (because its a semiconductor) into a conductor. Basically a flash cell is a programmable transistor. All transistors have at least one voltage differential threshold, but unlike the transistors you find within CPUs, flash cells do not have a fixed threshold but instead can have their thresholds programmed.
  
  The idea that TLC isnt MLC is also incorrect. MLC means that the overall logic identifies more than 1 region where a threshold may be set to and subsequently found within. For decades MLC nearly universally meant the 3 region variety as it was all that was really cost-practical, so for marketing purposes the moniker "TLC" was introduced for the newer 7 region variety of MLC to distinguish them from 3 region chips which were being marketed so generically as "MLC" as an alternative to "SLC."
13. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by grumpy_old_grandpa · 2015-08-04 07:23 · Score: 1
  
  This pictures illustrates it clearly: http://www.pcper.com/files/ima...
  And Wikipedia goes into more detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
  
  SLC - Single Level Cell = 1 bit (2 states), most robust
  MLC - Multi Level Cell = (typically) 2 bits (4 states), ~1/10 of the lifespan of SLC
  TLC - Triple Level Cell = 3 bits (8 states), ~1/10 of the lifespan of MLC
14. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 12:39 · Score: 0
  
  If 1.6 bits per cell ever made any sense to you, then you should just leave the discussion. Bow out gracefully. Admit to yourself that you vastly overstepped your area of knowledge and spare us all from your embarrassed back-peddling.
15. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by Rockoon · 2015-08-04 12:48 · Score: 1
  
  Calling something with 3 BITS that has 8 LEVELS triple level is silly.
  Especially since it only has 7 threshold levels... which was clearly explained to you hours before you made this reply. Typo, or dumbo?
  
  --
  "His name was James Damore."
16. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by serviscope_minor · 2015-08-04 20:02 · Score: 1
  
  Especially since it only has 7 threshold levels... which was clearly explained to you hours before you made this reply.
  One threshold level = 2 distinguishable voltage levels. 7 thresholds = 8 distinguishable voltage levels. 3 bits is still not 3 levels by any normal definition of the word.
  Typo, or dumbo?
  It's entertaining that you're saying such things after making such elementary mistakes.
  
  --
  SJW n. One who posts facts.
17. Re:Will not buy TLC NAND by serviscope_minor · 2015-08-04 20:06 · Score: 1
  
  The level of ignorance on this thread is truly staggering:
  If 1.6 bits per cell ever made any sense to you, then you should just leave the discussion.
  Well, indeed. It seems I'm trying to talk technical things with people who don't even have the most elementrary grounding in information theory.
  
  --
  SJW n. One who posts facts.
Back in my day by Scottingham · 2015-08-04 02:41 · Score: 2, Funny

Our storage mediums spun and made noises! And we liked it!
1. Re:Back in my day by wonkey_monkey · 2015-08-04 03:08 · Score: 1
  
  *cups ear* Whut?!
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
2. Re:Back in my day by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 03:30 · Score: 0
  
  Maybe in your day newtimer. :-)
  
  In my day, we punched holes in bits of paper and liked it. :-)
  
  Background for anyone reading not old enough to know what I'm talking about: Google for ASR-33.
3. Re:Back in my day by Kjella · 2015-08-04 03:30 · Score: 1
  
  Back in my dad's day the memory spun and made noises. No idea if he liked it.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
4. Re:Back in my day by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 05:46 · Score: 0
  
  Back in my dad's day the memory spun and made noises.
  FTFY
5. Re:Back in my day by marciot · 2015-08-04 07:17 · Score: 2
  
  Our storage mediums spun and made noises! And we liked it!
  What is funny is that I recently upgraded my laptop to an SSD and I was flabbergasted that during disk access it made the exact same noise as it did when I had a regular hard disk. I thought I had been sold a fake SSD, but I’m getting approx 510MB/s on benchmarks, so I know it is legit. On further investigation the noise comes from where the speakers are located, so what I thought was hard disk noise was probably just electrical noise. My system makes the same soft buzzing sound on data access as it always had!
6. Re:Back in my day by OhSoLaMeow · 2015-08-04 07:29 · Score: 1
  
  Back in my dad's day the memory spun and made noises. No idea if he liked it.
  Back in my day I was an operator on a Burroughs B3500. This machine had core memory. If you bumped the tape cart against the memory cabinet a little too hard it would cause a memory fault. Apparently those ferrite donuts didn't like being jostled.
  
  --
  They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
7. Re:Back in my day by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 12:55 · Score: 0
  
  Back in my day 'mediums' wasn't a real word. And we liked it!
X3 by philmarcracken · 2015-08-04 02:52 · Score: 1

I wonder how these stack up... ahem with intels new offering.
Micron is ahead by just_common_sense · 2015-08-04 03:23 · Score: 1

Isn't Micron a step ahead with their 384Gb NAND chip?: http://www.micron.com/about/in...
1. Re:Micron is ahead by cheesybagel · 2015-08-04 14:04 · Score: 1
  
  Actually Samsung is ahead because they are the only ones selling 3D NAND right now. The Micron press release is more impressive than Toshiba's, sure, but it will take a couple of months before it gets into store shelves.
2. Re:Micron is ahead by robi5 · 2015-08-04 23:08 · Score: 1
  
  Why is it that the video at the link you sent compares the revolution to the jump from a single-story office to a 32-story highrise, yet, as a result, memory is only 3x as much? I'd expect a multiple of 32, or even if the old stuff was TLC and the new is SLC, a multiple of almost 10.
3. Re:Micron is ahead by just_common_sense · 2015-08-12 14:07 · Score: 1
  
  Individual layers in 3D NAND are not as dense as planar NAND. The density should increase as the technology matures. I also suspect that they're intentionally holding back so that they can maximize profits with incremental improvements.
4. Re:Micron is ahead by just_common_sense · 2015-08-12 14:21 · Score: 1
  
  Yes. Samsung certainly did take the first steps into the 3D NAND world and is ahead in that regard. Still, Micron might be ahead in the labs and could leapfrog them if their "floating gate" approach is superior. It's too early for me to tell.
3D Storage Crystals by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 03:58 · Score: 0

I am still holding out for 3D storage crystals. They should be on the market any day now. Well that's what they said 10 years ago.
1. Re:3D Storage Crystals by mlts · 2015-08-04 04:30 · Score: 1
  
  Holo storage was supposed to be out back in 1991-1992 (Tamarak), then about 10 years later, InPhase supposedly had a drive for it, but never made it to the market (IIRC).
  Would be nice if that technology would get off the ground, but so far, it has been nothing but vapor. I would wager Half Life 3 comes out well before then.
2. Re:3D Storage Crystals by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 05:13 · Score: 0
  
  Half-Life 3 has never even been announced. It has just been a dream of the fans.
3. Re:3D Storage Crystals by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 05:17 · Score: 0
  
  Uh hum... Woosh... He's saying it will never happen...
4. Re:3D Storage Crystals by kesuki · 2015-08-04 07:31 · Score: 1
  
  http://akoniaholographics.com/products/
  they switched from offering a end user drive to full rack-mounted usage scenario after they went bankrupt, and changed their name.
  
  --
  https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Baffled by troll moderation by BenJeremy · 2015-08-04 06:00 · Score: 1

I genuinely like to know what is "trollish" about my post. I'm just trying to make the reasonable prediction that cheap/dense SSDs and XPoint mean more about the death of platter drives as a storage medium than XPoint making SSDs obsolete.
I also agree with the other point made here that HDD manufacturers would be better served at looking to be a future replacement for tape media as an enterprise archival method.
Perhaps my mention of the artificial propping up of prices angered some slashdot mods? It's not like we haven't seen commodity pricing rise and fall on lots of PC components (the RAM pricing after the Sumitomo explosion is a big example of this). 2TB HDDs could be had for less than $50 before the Thai floods. They've barely returned to that pricing... 3~4 years down the road? Likewise, the industry has contracted AND considerably slowed higher capacity drives to market, even though the new infrastructure built to replace the flooded factories was supposed to facilitate all the new tech for 6TB and 8TB drives. Simple logic makes the truth abundantly clear: platter drive makers have been manipulating prices and the market to reap in higher margins, at the expense of progress for consumers. That's not a troll... unless the mods marking up the post are Western Digital and Seagate executives.
Still using Flash?? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 07:08 · Score: 0

Where are the memristors??
"two-bit" NAND by Anonymous Coward · 2015-08-04 08:35 · Score: 0

Maybe the marketing department wanted to avoid calling it "two-bit" NAND. Personally, I think either meaning is appropriate.