[Informational post] Historical background on NAND memory types
Hi, Giktayms! It is a fact that the performance of a solid-state drive depends not only on the controller, but also on the type of memory used in the SSD. Cheap cheap memory will kill all the advantages of a fast controller, because the entire burden falls on him, as well as a slow controller will not reveal the potential of fast memory. The market is more important than a large amount for modest money than the pure art of high speed, and given the fact that these two things are incompatible ... The key role in this equation is assigned to the letters - SLC, MLC and TLC. It is about the types of memory and I want to talk in this post.
For the seed, I will introduce all the “race participants” for a very long distance:
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Memory SLC - Single-Level Cell - long gone from the market, the fastest, most enduring and most expensive type of memory. Once upon a time, in 2004, the market share of SLC chips was more than 80%, but by 2011 they had disappeared from production and at the current moment we can consider them extinct. In addition to speed, the SLC architecture is also renowned for reliability, since it is much easier for the controller to catch errors.
Memory MLC - Multi-Level Cell - it’s also 2-bit MLC - the most popular type of current memory - it accounts for about 65 percent of the market, but its share is steadily decreasing. It is this memory that is mainly used by Kingston. The speed of such chips is lower than SLC, but it is enough to reveal the potential of the SATA III interface (as in the case of HyperX Savage , for example), and the best of the samples are perfect for working in PCI-E drives, for example, HyperX Predator .
The TLC memory - Triple-Level Cell, also known as 3-bit MLC - the cheapest of the three types of memory, appeared on the market in 2008 and has since devoured the market and is projected to take 90 percent of the market as early as 2017. What will the development of this standard bring? In the beginning - a small drop in speed for high-capacity solid-state drives. And then, after optimizing and improving the production process - the emergence of super-capacity and fairly fast SSDs of 4 terabytes and more at quite reasonable prices (in US dollars). Kingston is laying such a transition into a further development strategy, and soon we will see the first serial solid-state drives on a new type of memory.
We should digress on the subject of the resource - the indicated data is the theoretical maximum for each type of memory, the actual figures are also due to the manufacturing process, the quality of the plate, and, accordingly, the price per chip (the cheaper the chips, the shorter the service life) and the way to optimize the operation of the solid state drive in each individual controller (high-quality controller with high-quality firmware is always more expensive).
And here is a very interesting story - the share of USB Flash Drive - falls about 5% of the total consumption of chips, the share of memory cards - about 10%, about 20% of the computer market (SSD). And where is another 65% you ask? Tablets take 20 percent, another 5 percent take MP3 players and other similar devices, and 40% eat smartphones. By the way, another interesting fact - Apple consumes 16% of the total amount of flash memory produced. Here it is important to understand that the development direction of the market dictates, first of all, the mobile direction, and the desktops meekly follow the crowd of demonstrators with joyful slogans.
The speed of data exchange between the central and graphics cores and the storage system is growing fast enough so that in the foreseeable, but not near, future, to abandon the RAM as such. Direct access to the cache of drives will be a great solution to the famous “bottleneck”.
Thank you for your attention, stay with Kingston on Geektimes.ru!
For the seed, I will introduce all the “race participants” for a very long distance:
')
Memory SLC - Single-Level Cell - long gone from the market, the fastest, most enduring and most expensive type of memory. Once upon a time, in 2004, the market share of SLC chips was more than 80%, but by 2011 they had disappeared from production and at the current moment we can consider them extinct. In addition to speed, the SLC architecture is also renowned for reliability, since it is much easier for the controller to catch errors.
- Resource rewriting - about 90-100 thousand cycles per cell
- minimum power consumption
- highest writing speed
- the most expensive memory (about three times more expensive than MLC)
Memory MLC - Multi-Level Cell - it’s also 2-bit MLC - the most popular type of current memory - it accounts for about 65 percent of the market, but its share is steadily decreasing. It is this memory that is mainly used by Kingston. The speed of such chips is lower than SLC, but it is enough to reveal the potential of the SATA III interface (as in the case of HyperX Savage , for example), and the best of the samples are perfect for working in PCI-E drives, for example, HyperX Predator .
- Resource rewriting - about 10 thousand cycles per cell
- high recording density - 2 bits per cell
- moderate cost
The TLC memory - Triple-Level Cell, also known as 3-bit MLC - the cheapest of the three types of memory, appeared on the market in 2008 and has since devoured the market and is projected to take 90 percent of the market as early as 2017. What will the development of this standard bring? In the beginning - a small drop in speed for high-capacity solid-state drives. And then, after optimizing and improving the production process - the emergence of super-capacity and fairly fast SSDs of 4 terabytes and more at quite reasonable prices (in US dollars). Kingston is laying such a transition into a further development strategy, and soon we will see the first serial solid-state drives on a new type of memory.
- Resource rewriting - about 3-5 thousand cycles per cell
- high recording density - 3 bits per cell
- lowest cost (about 30% cheaper than MLC)
- lowest read and write speed
We should digress on the subject of the resource - the indicated data is the theoretical maximum for each type of memory, the actual figures are also due to the manufacturing process, the quality of the plate, and, accordingly, the price per chip (the cheaper the chips, the shorter the service life) and the way to optimize the operation of the solid state drive in each individual controller (high-quality controller with high-quality firmware is always more expensive).
Who consumes NAND memory?
And here is a very interesting story - the share of USB Flash Drive - falls about 5% of the total consumption of chips, the share of memory cards - about 10%, about 20% of the computer market (SSD). And where is another 65% you ask? Tablets take 20 percent, another 5 percent take MP3 players and other similar devices, and 40% eat smartphones. By the way, another interesting fact - Apple consumes 16% of the total amount of flash memory produced. Here it is important to understand that the development direction of the market dictates, first of all, the mobile direction, and the desktops meekly follow the crowd of demonstrators with joyful slogans.
The speed of data exchange between the central and graphics cores and the storage system is growing fast enough so that in the foreseeable, but not near, future, to abandon the RAM as such. Direct access to the cache of drives will be a great solution to the famous “bottleneck”.
Thank you for your attention, stay with Kingston on Geektimes.ru!
Our previous posts:
- Kingston USB Drive with Type-C Connector - DataTraveler microDuo 3C - 32GB of Storage
- HyperX Predator PCI-E SSD Review
- Kingston KC310 solid-state drive with a capacity of 960 gigabytes
- HyperX Savage Solid State Drive with a capacity of 960 gigabytes
- Kingston V310 solid-state drive with a capacity of 960 gigabytes
- Factory Tour in China
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/366205/
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