I get what layers mean, but what does plane? 232 isn't divisible by 6, so it can't mean that you can read or write on a 1/6th of a layer without reading all of it. If someone could ELI5 I'd appreciate it.
Think of it like pizza. 176 layer die is a pizza with 4 slices and 232 layer die is a pizza with 6 slices. If you're not allowed to further divide each slice, only 4 people can simultaneously eat pizza in 176 layer die but 6 people can eat pizza in 232 layer die. Hence, 232 is faster.
Layers and decks refer to the manufacturing process, where a deck consists of a certain number of layers. Both are stacked horizontally on top of each other.
A plane is a vertical subdivision of the whole die, part of the control architecture, and relates to how the NAND die communicates with the SSD's controller. Simply put, each plane is a semi-autonomous subdivision of the NAND die that can be accessed in parallel to some extent (I forget to which extent).
Every storage/memory device is divided and then further sub-divided to make accessing it easier for it's controller. DDR5 has channels, sub-channels, dies, and then the die itself is divided into bank groups, banks, rows and columns, etc...
In this case I think that the NAND planes are best compared to DRAM's bank groups and banks. Both allow for increased parallelization in the larger and denser dies that we're getting by increasing the number of transistors in the control circuitry.
Micron's 176L NAND is not a joke. It destroys all other NAND technologies out of water. Period. How one might ask.
Look at the latest Seagate Firecuda SSDs, they use Micron 176L NAND Flash technology and they are fastest of all, the Firecuda 530 NVMe PCIe4.0 SSD is the fastest. But wait, the thing is not that which actually made me think how Micron is really pushing forth, look at the endurance of the drives which are using that on Seagate.
Samsung 980Pro / SK Hynix Platinum P41 / WD SN850 all of these have exact same damn rating and same capacity limits, at 1200TBW maxed out. 2TB only.
Micron 176L Firecuda 530 at 4TB and the endurance rating at sky high levels it's higher than Samsung MLC 860 Pro 4TB older MLC Samsung V NAND is 4800TBW and the 176L TLC is 5100TBW they beat Samsung MLC with TLC technology. 2TB Firecuda 530 has 2550TBW, that is 2x of the usual WD / SKHynix 2TB drives.
A massive shame is how blisteringly expensive their 530 4TB NVMe SSD is. I guess once PCIe 5.0 comes out they will make this cheaper, I hope so. I can finally grab a couple of these and replace my brand new 980 Pros (use them as USB C drives).
Samsung still did not create any meaningful alternative to their MLC technology in Endurance at all, pathetic really how far they have hamstrung their own leadership technology for BS profit maximization. Their LSI fabrication of 8N (Ampere Nvidia exclusive) is also a mere small step from their 10nm. GDDR6 finally caught up with Micron PAM4 GDDR6X though. But Micron probably is efficient now.
Where's SanDisk ? After being brought out by WD, they failed hard. I do not see their SanDisk Extreme Pro series anymore it was the only drive along with Samsung 850 Pro to have 10 Year warranty, the last MLC drives. And also KIOXIA being a pet of Bain capital (WD, Apple and Toshiba) they fell flat on face in sheer innovation now.
But the biggest failure is on Intel, their greedy pig investors were happy pumping the money and using it to siphon off made a ton of cash on x86 and dumped it with Apple being their new child. Result ? R&D axed off totally, 3DXPoint dead, the best of Human technology in Memory now buried. Look at the Intel Optane P5800X and see the Endurance and bandwidth on that beast. RIP Optane / 3DXpoint.
I hope the BS PLC doesn't see light and we see more endurance and performance from TLC itself.
"Look at the latest Seagate Firecuda SSDs, they use Micron 176L NAND Flash technology and they are fastest of all, the Firecuda 530 NVMe PCIe4.0 SSD is the fastest."
(sigh) I continue to lament Optane's passing. What a performer! If both Micron & Intel had kept at it, they could have made it less expensive. Instead, more lost R&D and manufacturing just because the first few iterations weren't instant profit leaders.
Several other companies have been working on competitors to Optane, even before it launched. HP's vaporware memristors, Crossbar ReRAM, poorly named Storage Class Memory (IBM?), MRAM, and inferior flash-based alternatives like Toshiba XL-Flash, Samsung Z-NAND, etc.
Some of these could take Optane's place, but ultimately we want a universal memory that can replace both DRAM and NAND. Optane was not it and did not live up to its initial hype.
No one wants universal memory. I want a low latency non-volatile memory to replace some SRAM and all DRAM (MRAM fits the bill) and I want a cheap rewriteable memory to replace NAND when it stops shrinking (Whatever can be easily stacked into hundreds of layers). Both of these goals are at odds with eachother, since designing and fabbing a memory always involves tradeoffs.
Thanks for the write up Ryan, There is mention of the implied larger capacities, but without going around inspecting everyone's M.2 PCBs, I'm not sure what the current max feasible package count would be for this. Are we looking at 8TB+ options on single sided M.2? More value oriented 8TB M.2s? Will this be backported to their value SATA drive options? I'm sure that you could easily outstrip 3.5" HDD limits with a 20+TB 2.5" SSD. Of course pricing would reflect, but a 232L TLC/QLC/PLC SATA drive could actually pose a perf for value argument...
For high performance SSDs, most current single-sided designs are 2 NAND packages + DRAM and a controller. So Micron's 232L NAND would allow for those SSDs to be built out to 4TB capacities.
I imagine there are some DRAMless drives out there that have worked in 4 packages on a single side, so they'd theoretically be able to go up to 8TB. But off the top of my head I don't know of any such drives.
Can someone explain the terminology? What constitutes a layer, deck? Does this device have 232 memory cells stacked vertically, or does it have 232 process layers (which would imply much smaller number of stacked memory cells)
To steal something Billy wrote a couple of years ago:
Terminology Info: NAND companies build 'decks' of 32-116 layers of bits, and then combine decks to get a total number of layers. Building more layers in a single deck is difficult, and so combining decks gives a higher total number of layers. Typically the companies that can put more layers in a single deck are said to have a more advanced process. Most companies use two decks to reach 150+ layers, while Intel/Solidigm used 3 decks of 48 layers to reach 144 layers .
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andychow - Tuesday, July 26, 2022 - link
I get what layers mean, but what does plane? 232 isn't divisible by 6, so it can't mean that you can read or write on a 1/6th of a layer without reading all of it. If someone could ELI5 I'd appreciate it.yankeeDDL - Wednesday, July 27, 2022 - link
I asked myself the same question. I don't have the answer but I thought that parity/redundant bits are included in the stack.blanarahul - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
Think of it like pizza. 176 layer die is a pizza with 4 slices and 232 layer die is a pizza with 6 slices. If you're not allowed to further divide each slice, only 4 people can simultaneously eat pizza in 176 layer die but 6 people can eat pizza in 232 layer die. Hence, 232 is faster.Wereweeb - Tuesday, August 2, 2022 - link
Layers and decks refer to the manufacturing process, where a deck consists of a certain number of layers. Both are stacked horizontally on top of each other.A plane is a vertical subdivision of the whole die, part of the control architecture, and relates to how the NAND die communicates with the SSD's controller. Simply put, each plane is a semi-autonomous subdivision of the NAND die that can be accessed in parallel to some extent (I forget to which extent).
Every storage/memory device is divided and then further sub-divided to make accessing it easier for it's controller. DDR5 has channels, sub-channels, dies, and then the die itself is divided into bank groups, banks, rows and columns, etc...
In this case I think that the NAND planes are best compared to DRAM's bank groups and banks. Both allow for increased parallelization in the larger and denser dies that we're getting by increasing the number of transistors in the control circuitry.
Silver5urfer - Tuesday, July 26, 2022 - link
Micron's 176L NAND is not a joke. It destroys all other NAND technologies out of water. Period. How one might ask.Look at the latest Seagate Firecuda SSDs, they use Micron 176L NAND Flash technology and they are fastest of all, the Firecuda 530 NVMe PCIe4.0 SSD is the fastest. But wait, the thing is not that which actually made me think how Micron is really pushing forth, look at the endurance of the drives which are using that on Seagate.
Samsung 980Pro / SK Hynix Platinum P41 / WD SN850 all of these have exact same damn rating and same capacity limits, at 1200TBW maxed out. 2TB only.
Micron 176L Firecuda 530 at 4TB and the endurance rating at sky high levels it's higher than Samsung MLC 860 Pro 4TB older MLC Samsung V NAND is 4800TBW and the 176L TLC is 5100TBW they beat Samsung MLC with TLC technology. 2TB Firecuda 530 has 2550TBW, that is 2x of the usual WD / SKHynix 2TB drives.
A massive shame is how blisteringly expensive their 530 4TB NVMe SSD is. I guess once PCIe 5.0 comes out they will make this cheaper, I hope so. I can finally grab a couple of these and replace my brand new 980 Pros (use them as USB C drives).
Samsung still did not create any meaningful alternative to their MLC technology in Endurance at all, pathetic really how far they have hamstrung their own leadership technology for BS profit maximization. Their LSI fabrication of 8N (Ampere Nvidia exclusive) is also a mere small step from their 10nm. GDDR6 finally caught up with Micron PAM4 GDDR6X though. But Micron probably is efficient now.
Where's SanDisk ? After being brought out by WD, they failed hard. I do not see their SanDisk Extreme Pro series anymore it was the only drive along with Samsung 850 Pro to have 10 Year warranty, the last MLC drives. And also KIOXIA being a pet of Bain capital (WD, Apple and Toshiba) they fell flat on face in sheer innovation now.
But the biggest failure is on Intel, their greedy pig investors were happy pumping the money and using it to siphon off made a ton of cash on x86 and dumped it with Apple being their new child. Result ? R&D axed off totally, 3DXPoint dead, the best of Human technology in Memory now buried. Look at the Intel Optane P5800X and see the Endurance and bandwidth on that beast. RIP Optane / 3DXpoint.
I hope the BS PLC doesn't see light and we see more endurance and performance from TLC itself.
Chaser - Tuesday, July 26, 2022 - link
"Look at the latest Seagate Firecuda SSDs, they use Micron 176L NAND Flash technology and they are fastest of all, the Firecuda 530 NVMe PCIe4.0 SSD is the fastest."The Hynix P41 is the fastest SSD today.
A5 - Wednesday, July 27, 2022 - link
Unless you have specific workloads, the drive will be obsolete before you get anywhere near that 1200TBW, much less 2550TBW.My 8 year-old 840 EVO is still at 90-something percent of its p/e cycles remaining.
romrunning - Wednesday, July 27, 2022 - link
(sigh) I continue to lament Optane's passing. What a performer! If both Micron & Intel had kept at it, they could have made it less expensive. Instead, more lost R&D and manufacturing just because the first few iterations weren't instant profit leaders.nandnandnand - Wednesday, July 27, 2022 - link
Several other companies have been working on competitors to Optane, even before it launched. HP's vaporware memristors, Crossbar ReRAM, poorly named Storage Class Memory (IBM?), MRAM, and inferior flash-based alternatives like Toshiba XL-Flash, Samsung Z-NAND, etc.Some of these could take Optane's place, but ultimately we want a universal memory that can replace both DRAM and NAND. Optane was not it and did not live up to its initial hype.
Wereweeb - Tuesday, August 2, 2022 - link
No one wants universal memory. I want a low latency non-volatile memory to replace some SRAM and all DRAM (MRAM fits the bill) and I want a cheap rewriteable memory to replace NAND when it stops shrinking (Whatever can be easily stacked into hundreds of layers). Both of these goals are at odds with eachother, since designing and fabbing a memory always involves tradeoffs.AMv8(1day) - Tuesday, July 26, 2022 - link
Thanks for the write up Ryan,There is mention of the implied larger capacities, but without going around inspecting everyone's M.2 PCBs, I'm not sure what the current max feasible package count would be for this. Are we looking at 8TB+ options on single sided M.2? More value oriented 8TB M.2s?
Will this be backported to their value SATA drive options? I'm sure that you could easily outstrip 3.5" HDD limits with a 20+TB 2.5" SSD. Of course pricing would reflect, but a 232L TLC/QLC/PLC SATA drive could actually pose a perf for value argument...
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, July 26, 2022 - link
For high performance SSDs, most current single-sided designs are 2 NAND packages + DRAM and a controller. So Micron's 232L NAND would allow for those SSDs to be built out to 4TB capacities.I imagine there are some DRAMless drives out there that have worked in 4 packages on a single side, so they'd theoretically be able to go up to 8TB. But off the top of my head I don't know of any such drives.
BoredErica - Tuesday, August 9, 2022 - link
Is there a reason why many 2tb versions of ssds have slightly lower qd1 randoms?romrunning - Wednesday, July 27, 2022 - link
You could get more dies on a 22110 m.2 drive, not just the regular 2280 length.technoshark - Friday, July 29, 2022 - link
Can someone explain the terminology? What constitutes a layer, deck? Does this device have 232 memory cells stacked vertically, or does it have 232 process layers (which would imply much smaller number of stacked memory cells)blanarahul - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
Yes it was 232 cells stacked vertically.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 3, 2022 - link
To steal something Billy wrote a couple of years ago:Terminology Info: NAND companies build 'decks' of 32-116 layers of bits, and then combine decks to get a total number of layers. Building more layers in a single deck is difficult, and so combining decks gives a higher total number of layers. Typically the companies that can put more layers in a single deck are said to have a more advanced process. Most companies use two decks to reach 150+ layers, while Intel/Solidigm used 3 decks of 48 layers to reach 144 layers .