WD-Toshiba QLC SSD ready for volume production by end of year.

[da_knug]

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Toshiba and Western Digital's rather shaky joint venture in Japan has finished up development of a 1.33 terabit QLC (quad-level cell) NAND chip, which could prove very useful to gamers. WD is prepping consumer-facing SanDisk drives fitted with the latest storage tech for volume production before the end of the year.

 

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As storage requirements have skyrocketed over the past few decades so, too, has the need for super speedy memory tech that can keep up with modern computing power. Unfortunately, this tech can be hugely expensive per-GB compared to high-capacity platter drives, so most of us gamers have been fairly lackadaisical with investing heavily in SSD storage for anything other than our chosen OS and a couple of select games.

 

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But that’s not going to be the case forever, and QLC is one step towards making NAND flash somewhat affordable thanks to all the bits it can store in one cell - four, to be precise. Toshiba and WD’s latest QLC 3D NAND chip fits 1.33 terabits of data onto a single 96-layer chip. It’s also already sampling and will be available in consumer drives under the SanDisk badge (which WD now owns, hence the awkward joint venture) before the end of the year. 

 

This is great news for everyone, cheap SSD, they won't be as durable as the 'normal' ssds we have today, but they will greatly make up for that in price, so maybe we can finally say goodbye to the hard drive and go fully solid state. 

 

I recently read a post here on the forum discussing news about WD shouting down one of their HDD factories, this seems to correlate well with their big steps towards QLC flash. 

 

EDIT: post i was talking about, by AlfaProto, 

 

SOURCE: PCGamesN

[themctipers]

@DocSwag oh no, my MLC SSDs are now even harder and more expensive to find  

[avg123]

What do you mean by not as durable as normal ssds? 

[Sakkura]

1.33 Tbit NAND is not "good for gamers" or any other regular consumers, at least not directly. It makes for very high-capacity SSDs to be made cheaper, but those SSDs are for enterprise customers mostly.

 

If enterprise customers buy a lot of this memory it might free up some capacity of other NAND for the regular consumers though, so it's not like this is bad news.

 

13 minutes ago, avg123 said:

What do you mean by not as durable as normal ssds? 

QLC puts one more bit into each memory cell, doubling the required number of voltage levels from 2³ = 8 to 2⁴ = 16. That means a memory cell will have to be retired much sooner, once its voltage is too unpredictable to fit into a half as big range.

[Amazonsucks]

16 hours ago, themctipers said:

@DocSwag oh no, my MLC SSDs are now even harder and more expensive to find  

Ikr i dont want more bits per cell. I think professional ssds will clntinue to be mlc for a while. Some people actually need things that continue to work so theyll still make them.

 

But thats how everything is in consumer electronics is: if its good, it gets more expensive ans harder to find.

 

Race to the bottom economics at its finest. 

[Amazonsucks]

3 hours ago, Sakkura said:

1.33 Tbit NAND is not "good for gamers" or any other regular consumers, at least not directly. It makes for very high-capacity SSDs to be made cheaper, but those SSDs are for enterprise customers mostly.

 

If enterprise customers buy a lot of this memory it might free up some capacity of other NAND for the regular consumers though, so it's not like this is bad news.

 

QLC puts one more bit into each memory cell, doubling the required number of voltage levels from 2³ = 8 to 2⁴ = 16. That means a memory cell will have to be retired much sooner, once its voltage is too unpredictable to fit into a half as big range.

Enterprise customers buy eMLC drives with massive overprovisioning. No way youll find a lot of enterprise drives with qlc in them. This is for cheap consumer drives.

 

They make more bits per cell sound like a good thing in consumer drive advertising like LED backlights in TVs. 

 

They literally use its worst feature as a sellkng point because they know consumers are generally clueless.

 

 

[leadeater]

19 minutes ago, Amazonsucks said:

Enterprise customers buy eMLC drives with massive overprovisioning. No way youll find a lot of enterprise drives with qlc in them. This is for cheap consumer drives.

There's actually a lot of enterprise TLC being used now, NAND flash isn't what it was 5 years ago or more. I know I still generally prefer MLC but all the reasons for why that is doesn't really apply anymore to current products. Samsung PM863 is a good example of TLC that is widely used. Then you've got the higher end Samsung TLC products like the PM1643/PM1633 with 1 DWPD on 30TB/15TB products.

 

Then there is that crazy big SAS QLC SSD with life time endurance warranty, the 500MB/s write it's capable of is low enough it's near impossible to wear it out in a time frame anyone would care about. Not a tier 1 storage medium target though that is for sure.

 

When you're buying a tray of 24 of them and the TLC variant meets all the requirements you have it's a bit hard to push for the MLC variant due to the cost increase. Similar story back in the day for 10k RPM vs 15k RPM, though you'd avoid 15K for reliability reasons so kind of the reverse situation heh.

[Doobeedoo]

20 hours ago, themctipers said:

@DocSwag oh no, my MLC SSDs are now even harder and more expensive to find  

Yeah, I opt for Samsung Pro lineup. 

 

 

This is good though. More cheaper SSDs and with higher capacity. Also lower SSD prices in general. 

[mr moose]

4 hours ago, leadeater said:

There's actually a lot of enterprise TLC being used now, NAND flash isn't what it was 5 years ago or more. I know I still generally prefer MLC but all the reasons for why that is doesn't really apply anymore to current products. Samsung PM863 is a good example of TLC that is widely used. Then you've got the higher end Samsung TLC products like the PM1643/PM1633 with 1 DWPD on 30TB/15TB products.

 

Then there is that crazy big SAS QLC SSD with life time endurance warranty, the 500MB/s write it's capable of is low enough it's near impossible to wear it out in a time frame anyone would care about. Not a tier 1 storage medium target though that is for sure.

 

When you're buying a tray of 24 of them and the TLC variant meets all the requirements you have it's a bit hard to push for the MLC variant due to the cost increase. Similar story back in the day for 10k RPM vs 15k RPM, though you'd avoid 15K for reliability reasons so kind of the reverse situation heh.

Vertex 3 (MLC 2011) 120G is still going very strong today as my main drive. It has the page files on it and is perpetually within a few GB of full. 

[asus killer]

initially it was scary the tales from SSD durability.

But SSD's last a very long time for a normal use, most end up outdated for being to small in size before they become trash, i don't mind less durability and less price, seems like a fair trade off.

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, asus killer said:

initially it was scary the tales from SSD durability.

But SSD's last a very long time for a normal use, most end up outdated for being to small in size before they become trash, i don't mind less durability and less price, seems like a fair trade off.

Netapp country manager said there hasn't been a single SSD endurance failure in any Netapp sold in any country, same thing can't be said about HDDs .

[DocSwag]

On 7/21/2018 at 6:22 AM, themctipers said:

@DocSwag oh no, my MLC SSDs are now even harder and more expensive to find  

It must be said though that 3D TLC is getting pretty damn good. I'm totally fine with having 64 layer+ TLC in my ssds. 

 

QLC though.... I'm still not sure about. Endurance will be pretty poop but I'm also quite worried about write speeds.

[themctipers]

5 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

It must be said though that 3D TLC is getting pretty damn good. I'm totally fine with having 64 layer+ TLC in my ssds. 

 

QLC though.... I'm still not sure about. Endurance will be pretty poop but I'm also quite worried about write speeds.

We're at a point where 3D TLC is fine for most people but MLC is still preferred against TLC

QLC, no fucking way. Only as a cheap storage drive which hopefully is what this technology will bring. Replace HDD with cheap QLC SSD, important stuff on TLC or MLC. 

[DocSwag]

4 minutes ago, themctipers said:

We're at a point where 3D TLC is fine for most people but MLC is still preferred against TLC

QLC, no fucking way. Only as a cheap storage drive which hopefully is what this technology will bring. Replace HDD with cheap QLC SSD, important stuff on TLC or MLC. 

The problem I have with QLC is you're only getting 33% higher capacity at this point for what cost to endurance and performance (mostly matters on lower capacity SSDs)? So what, a $100 500gb TLC ssd becomes an $80-$90 QLC SSD. That's not a huge price drop but you could see significantly reduced endurance and performance. By the time QLC approaches HDD $/gb TLC won't be far behind.

 

Honestly I always thought TLC was the last stop. I guess not. It looks like it'll be QLC. I can't see it getting any further though.

[themctipers]

2 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

The problem I have with QLC is you're only getting 33% higher capacity at this point for what cost to endurance and performance (mostly matters on lower capacity SSDs)? So what, a $100 500gb TLC ssd becomes an $80-$90 QLC SSD. That's not a huge price drop but you could see significantly reduced endurance and performance. By the time QLC approaches HDD $/gb TLC won't be far behind.

 

Honestly I always thought TLC was the last stop. I guess not. It looks like it'll be QLC. I can't see it getting any further though.

I see it as a cheap QLC SSD is ~$50 CAD at 256GB, as a 'starter' SSD, or just a scratch disk, or for your mom's old netbook, TLC/MLC will remain for high performance / reliability required areas like OS for main desktop but QLC will take over those large SSDs

 

[Sakkura]

10 hours ago, Amazonsucks said:

Enterprise customers buy eMLC drives with massive overprovisioning. No way youll find a lot of enterprise drives with qlc in them. This is for cheap consumer drives.

 

They make more bits per cell sound like a good thing in consumer drive advertising like LED backlights in TVs. 

 

They literally use its worst feature as a sellkng point because they know consumers are generally clueless.

It depends what kind of enterprise usage it's for. QLC is fine for read-heavy applications.

 

This is definitely not for cheap consumer SSDs, as you can't hit a small enough capacity.

[DocSwag]

9 hours ago, themctipers said:

I see it as a cheap QLC SSD is ~$50 CAD at 256GB, as a 'starter' SSD, or just a scratch disk, or for your mom's old netbook, TLC/MLC will remain for high performance / reliability required areas like OS for main desktop but QLC will take over those large SSDs

 

You're probably right. I feel like as SSD $/GB goes down over time QLC will become more and more viable as larger capacity SSDs become more and more common, allowing for better endurance and read/write speeds.

[themctipers]

1 hour ago, DocSwag said:

You're probably right. I feel like as SSD $/GB goes down over time QLC will become more and more viable as larger capacity SSDs become more and more common, allowing for better endurance and read/write speeds.

I still see there being a difference between TLC and QLC, but it might just be MLC and QLC, MLC for people who are too worried about SSD lifespan for me or people with too much money and QLC for everyone else for purposes if it does get better endurance than.. QLC. If it stays the same, so shit, QLC will become HDD and MLC/TLC for OS/shit. 

[bcredeur97]

I dont want QLC nand.... 

I rather have TLC at the least... MLC preferred. I want something I can write to a lot without concern of it's longevity. 1PB of writes or so is perfect in my opinion as a lifespan. 

QLC will have it's place... but that place wont be on my computer..

[kuddlesworth9419]

I just really want cheap 4TB SSD's. Like super cheap. Then I can get rid of all my HDD's.

[TOMPPIX]

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/intel-660p-ssd-spotted-first-qlc-based-ssd-512-gb-nvme-for-114-euros.html

[jagdtigger]

On 7/23/2018 at 7:11 AM, kuddlesworth9419 said:

I just really want cheap 4TB SSD's. Like super cheap. Then I can get rid of all my HDD's.

I would prefer 10TB ones...

 

 

/ON

Well IMO QLC is only good for stuff that is mostly static(once written onto it and then only reading it back).

[Sakkura]

4 hours ago, TOMPPIX said:

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/intel-660p-ssd-spotted-first-qlc-based-ssd-512-gb-nvme-for-114-euros.html

That uses completely different NAND flash.

 

We're talking about 1.33 Tbit Toshiba-Sandisk 96-layer 3D QLC NAND.

 

That SSD uses 1 Tbit Intel-Micron 64-layer 3D QLC NAND.

[yian88]

On 7/22/2018 at 8:32 AM, Amazonsucks said:

 

 

They make more bits per cell sound like a good thing in consumer drive advertising like LED backlights in TVs. 

 

LED backlight in a TV is good thing, better than cathode or plasma, do you want to fight/argue about it? im ready to go...

[Amazonsucks]

15 hours ago, yian88 said:

LED backlight in a TV is good thing, better than cathode or plasma, do you want to fight/argue about it? im ready to go...

RGB LED backlighting in LCD TVs and monitors is good, GB-r LED backlights are good, and even the old WCG-CCFL backlights were good. WCG-CCFL TVs and monitors are no longer made because WLED is cheaper. RGB and GB-r backlit monitors are still made but they range from about $2,500-$50,000USD.

 

W-LEDs which are the cheapest and worst in terms of objectively measurable spectral output, with a strong blue peak that ends up being off the actual sRGB or Rec.709 specified blue primary wavelength, and insufficient green and red output to use narrow filters are literally worse than old WCG-CCFL backlights from 2007.

 

I never brought up cathode ray tubes or plasma, because guess what? Those are emissive displays(along with OLED and microLED) that dont have backlights at all... im talking about different BACKLIGHTS in displays, not different display tech.

 

So in 99% of TVs and monitors the LED backlight is a WLED and a bad thing because they have terrible colour.

 

If we had been discussing different display tech, microLED is the future and OLEDs are generally superior to LCDs.