WD Announces First 64-Layer 512Gb TLC NAND Die Amidst Toshiba Turmoil

[It's me!]

This is like WD's third announcement of a new 3D NAND, but I can't find any of its previous 3D NAND in an SSD anywhere. I know the 48-layer is in the iPhone, but other than that there arent any SanDisk 3D NAND products out there. It certainly isn't in any SSDs. 

 

Quote

Hot on the heels of Micron's announcement that it is developing the "world's smallest" 64-layer 3D NAND, WD announced that it has begun pilot production of the "world's first" 64-layer 512Gb TLC NAND die. 
WD inherited the Toshiba NAND partnership when it purchased SanDisk. NAND production capability provides WD with a commanding position in the SSD market, but a series of scandals and failed investments have plagued Toshiba. As a result, Toshiba recently announced plans to sever its semiconductor business and make it into its own entity. 

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-toshiba-3d-nand-64-layer,33588.html

[2FA]

I bet the lifespan is going to be even worse than existing TLC NAND.

[m0k]

36 minutes ago, It's me! said:

 

This is like WD's third announcement of a new 3D NAND, but I can't find it in an SSD anywhere. 

 

its a press release, not a product release
 

WD's press release stated that the company is in pilot production with its new 64-layer TLC NAND, but there isn't any indication of when it will reach full-scale production.

[It's me!]

7 minutes ago, mok said:

its a press release, not a product release
 

WD's press release stated that the company is in pilot production with its new 64-layer TLC NAND, but there isn't any indication of when it will reach full-scale production.

I'm referring to its other 3D NAND. This is the third revision, but the first two aren't even really on the market. 

[Notional]

64 layers of 512Gbit dies or 512Gbit in total per stack?

[It's me!]

17 minutes ago, Notional said:

64 layers of 512Gbit dies or 512Gbit in total per stack?

Each die has 64 layers of cells. Then they stack those die into packages, so you could have up to 1 TB of NAND in a single package if they stack it up to 16. 

[Notional]

8 minutes ago, It's me! said:

Each die has 64 layers of cells. Then they stack those die into packages, so you could have up to 1 TB of NAND in a single package if they stack it up to 16. 

So each layer is 512Gbit? That would make make each stack 4TB in size. If not then each stack is only 64GB in size.

[It's me!]

20 minutes ago, Notional said:

So each layer is 512Gbit? That would make make each stack 4TB in size. If not then each stack is only 64GB in size.

No, each individual die has 64 layers of cells, which means that it has 64GB of capacity per die. They take the die and then stack them up into a package. Each package can have up to 16 die, which means 1TB max. 

[Bouzoo]

Very interesting, considering WD is (reportedly) about to become the 2nd player in semiconductor business, just behind Samsung.

[Coaxialgamer]

1 hour ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

I bet the lifespan is going to be even worse than existing TLC NAND.

This is still  TLC, not QLC.  Lifespan and reliability shouldn't be any worse. 

[dizmo]

If only the performance of WD SSDs was better.

Their Blue series drives are pretty lackluster.

[Mooshi]

TLC for nand causes the same reaction as hearing "TN"  for panels. #triggered

[Doobeedoo]

Ok, very nice. Always good to see SSD tech advancements, and hopefully prices close to HDD in times

Though, what's up with SLC SSDs haven't hear anything about it quite some time.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

3 hours ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

I bet the lifespan is going to be even worse than existing TLC NAND.

 

1 hour ago, Mooshi said:

TLC for nand causes the same reaction as hearing "TN"  for panels. #triggered

 

Apparently people are still falling for the old wives tale of TLC dying quickly. 

 

Techreport did an endurance test on several 250-256GB SSDs a couple of years ago.  The TLC-based 840 (that's the first model, not even the later EVO) made it to 800+ TB of writes before it died, which is more than the MLC-based Intel 335 and Kingston HyperX did.  Granted, the Intel SSD stopped working due to the firmware locking it once it hit 700TB, but still the TLC SSD outlasted it.

 

To put that number into perspective : If you write 100GB of data to your drive every day (which is an insane amount of data for consumers), it takes over 20 years to reach that 800TB mark. 

Do you really believe you'll be using the same SSDs in 20 years time?  If Windows keeps growing at the pace it did over the last 20 years (Win98 was around 175MB installed, Win10 is more like 20GB) , by 2035 a 2TB SSD will probably not even be big enough to house just the OS.

[Agosto]

16 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

 

 

Apparently people are still falling for the old wives tale of TLC dying quickly. 

 

Techreport did an endurance test on several 250-256GB SSDs a couple of years ago.  The TLC-based 840 (that's the first model, not even the later EVO) made it to 800+ TB of writes before it died, which is more than the MLC-based Intel 335 and Kingston HyperX did.  Granted, the Intel SSD stopped working due to the firmware locking it once it hit 700TB, but still the TLC SSD outlasted it.

 

To put that number into perspective : If you write 100GB of data to your drive every day (which is an insane amount of data for consumers), it takes over 20 years to reach that 800TB mark. 

Do you really believe you'll be using the same SSDs in 20 years time?  If Windows keeps growing at the pace it did over the last 20 years (Win98 was around 175MB installed, Win10 is more like 20GB) , by 2035 a 2TB SSD will probably not even be big enough to house just the OS.

That was on something like 25nm NAND, most of the current TLC chips are on 15nm which is much more "fragile". Moreover TLC still suffers from long term performance degradation, even if it's not that bad on consumer workload

Still I wouldn't buy a TLC drive to keep my data.

[Belgarathian]

WD has come out hitting for 6 since their acquisition of SanDisk (also, only just got their name reference! ) 

[samiscool51]

so much porn could be stored on there!

and games but more importantly porn!

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

Though, what's up with SLC SSDs haven't hear anything about it quite some time.

Pretty much exclusively used in the server market and even then only on the most high end extreme workloads, it's just too expensive to make them and isn't much better than eMLC. The other use is SLC cache on TLC SSDs but that usage will dwindle as 3D TLC becomes the only form of TLC in use.

[leadeater]

5 hours ago, Agost said:

That was on something like 25nm NAND, most of the current TLC chips are on 15nm which is much more "fragile". Moreover TLC still suffers from long term performance degradation, even if it's not that bad on consumer workload

Still I wouldn't buy a TLC drive to keep my data.

On the face of it correct yes, as you shrink it gets more fragile but that's assuming nothing is done about it. The write endurance on the same sized Samsung 3D TLC SSDs has only ever gone up and they are so confident in the reliability of them they give it a 10 year warranty.

 

Also as the capacity of SSDs increase the increase in write endurance isn't proportional, it's actually much better.

 

Planar TLC is the only TLC you should worry about for write endurance.

 

If the Techreport SSD endurance test was run again on current SSDs we would be seeing SSDs die well in to the PB mark, Samsung themselves had an engineering sample with 8PB writes with no errors reporting.

[Doobeedoo]

19 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Pretty much exclusively used in the server market and even then only on the most high end extreme workloads, it's just too expensive to make them and isn't much better than eMLC. The other use is SLC cache on TLC SSDs but that usage will dwindle as 3D TLC becomes the only form of TLC in use.

Yeah, as cache, just remembered. Though still wouldn't mind having a SLC SSD for at least OS though. Endurance is great. Mind you I have 256GB 850 Pro which is great.

[Drak3]

5 hours ago, Captain Chaos said:

Do you really believe you'll be using the same SSDs in 20 years time?  If Windows keeps growing at the pace it did over the last 20 years (Win98 was around 175MB installed, Win10 is more like 20GB) , by 2035 a 2TB SSD will probably not even be big enough to house just the OS.

The problem with your logic is assuming that file sizes are going to keep growing at the same rate than they have been. But that isn't the case for most standard files and Windows. Windows 7 through 10 all require 20GiB of HDD/SSD capacity for 64bit versions, 16GiB for 32bit.

Games are growing somewhat, but we're in a bit of a period of stagnation. The rate of growth doesn't put us in a position that we'll need hundreds of TB's of data just to store a week's worth of games.

Some Linux distributions are also growing faster than others, but we're also talking about operating systems that can be stored and booted of a 16GB thumbdrive and have a good amount of room for documents, some music, and pictures.

[patrickjp93]

12 hours ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

I bet the lifespan is going to be even worse than existing TLC NAND.

Not likely except against Samsung's most recent 3D TLC.

[patrickjp93]

3 hours ago, Drak3 said:

The problem with your logic is assuming that file sizes are going to keep growing at the same rate than they have been. But that isn't the case for most standard files and Windows. Windows 7 through 10 all require 20GiB of HDD/SSD capacity for 64bit versions, 16GiB for 32bit.

Games are growing somewhat, but we're in a bit of a period of stagnation. The rate of growth doesn't put us in a position that we'll need hundreds of TB's of data just to store a week's worth of games.

Some Linux distributions are also growing faster than others, but we're also talking about operating systems that can be stored and booted of a 16GB thumbdrive and have a good amount of room for documents, some music, and pictures.

2GB thumb drive if you count ArchLinux.

[Guest Darth Revan]

13 hours ago, It's me! said:

WD inherited the Toshiba NAND partnership when it purchased SanDisk.

So SanDisk was using Nand flash from Toshiba in their SSDs?

I ask because honestly I don't know. I thought they made them, not bought them from Toshiba and rebranding them as their own.

[patrickjp93]

12 hours ago, Notional said:

64 layers of 512Gbit dies or 512Gbit in total per stack?

Per stack, but a stack is as thin as a CPU die. It's likely the dies can themselves be stacked just like on Samsung's 1TB BGA package.