Flash Drive Question.

[DarkEnergy]

I'm just curious and Google can't seem to help me the way I must be asking it. What determines the size of a flash drive? Inside the storage chip, are there a set amount of whatever imprinted to determine it? If a 2gb and a 120gb flash drive have the same size storage chip, how much more of this "storage" can be printed on the thing? Is there a limit? Hope this isn't too confusing. 

[Zeke]

You see, the problem is not in fitting storage chips onto a PCB (take a look at 128 Gb microSD cards), the problem is making a controller that will work with them at reasonable speeds.

[DarkEnergy]

You see, the problem is not in fitting storage chips onto a PCB (take a look at 128 Gb microSD cards), the problem is making a controller that will work with them at reasonable speeds.

So, if the controller can handle it, you could technically put 1tb of space on a micro sd card? I have more questions now...

So, is it the controller that is programmed to only use a set amount of space, or is there a certain amount of something put on the storage chip that determines the space that the controller uses. 

[MLGNOSCOPEHEADSHOTGETREKT]

So, if the controller can handle it, you could technically put 1tb of space on a micro sd card? I have more questions now...

So, is it the controller that is programmed to only use a set amount of space, or is there a certain amount of something put on the storage chip that determines the space that the controller uses. 

Certain Storage Chip on the Chip

[Zeke]

So, if the controller can handle it, you could technically put 1tb of space on a micro sd card? I have more questions now...

So, is it the controller that is programmed to only use a set amount of space, or is there a certain amount of something put on the storage chip that determines the space that the controller uses. 

Lemme put it this way: the more memory you have, the beefier the controller needs to be to work fast. There's not much point in 1Tb card if the maximum read/write speeds are several megabytes per second, is it? That's why companies like Corsair are experimenting with SSD controllers on flash drives, for example. 

 

That's basically why nobody shoves a dozen of microSDs in a CompactFlash form factor to have a 6 Tb storage card.

[alpenwasser]

I'm just curious and Google can't seem to help me the way I must be asking it. What determines the size of a flash drive? Inside the storage chip, are there a set amount of whatever imprinted to determine it? If a 2gb and a 120gb flash drive have the same size storage chip, how much more of this "storage" can be printed on the thing? Is there a limit? Hope this isn't too confusing. 

Very abstractly put:

Information is stored in physical structures in flash storage (memory cells). Those

structures need space. The smaller one structural element, the more of them you can

pack in a given package size (i.e. a flash chip of a certain volume, length, width,

height).

Over the years, manufacturing processes have decreased the size of these cells, which

enables us to pack more of them into a package. Additionally, some clever engineering

tricks have increased the amount of bits which can be stored in a single memory cell.

SLC cells can store one bit per cell, but there are cells which can store several bits

per cell, for example as triple-level cells (TLC).

Each of them have their own different advantages and drawbacks.

Wikipedia has quite a bit of into on the topic, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory

As the storage capacity for a chip package has been increased, so have costs per GB

decreased over the past few years (I'm sure you've noticed ). One of the reasons

we haven't seen 10 TB SSDs yet is that they would be so prohibitively expensive that

the market for them would be ridiculously small.

Aside from that, yes, controllers, RAM, how you address the different memory packages

all figure into this too. The more total capacity you have, the faster the controller

(and the interface, such as SATA, PCIe, whatever) should ideally be to work with all

that capacity. Faster controllers cost more, of course.

As for why a 2 GB chip might be of same physical size as a 16 GB package: That could

be down to manufacturing processes (structural size) or part of the chip having been

fused off (disabled) because it was faulty in manufacturing. Sort of like cores being

disabled in CPUs to make lower-end CPUs out of higher-end chips when not all cores are

working properly.

[mikat]

So, if the controller can handle it, you could technically put 1tb of space on a micro sd card? I have more questions now...

So, is it the controller that is programmed to only use a set amount of space, or is there a certain amount of something put on the storage chip that determines the space that the controller uses. 

you know that stuff is being worked on by samsung right now? 1 tb (micro) sd cards here we come!

[mikat]

oops accidental double post, how do i remove this post?