[Brian]

At the Needham 5th Annual HDD & Memory Conference today, OCZ revealed a good deal of vision about what both consumer and enterprise customers can expect out of the company in the coming quarters. OCZ highlighted a number of new initiatives; like the first SSD to use TLC NAND hitting the market early next year, their new Indilinx processors with support for up to 100,000 IOPS, the Intrepid 3 SSD and the NVM Express, OCZ's next generation PCIe SSD processor.


OCZ Provides Vision for Next Generation SSDs and Processors

[zfisch]

Brian, on 03 November 2011 - 01:55 PM, said:

...and the NVM Express, OCZ's next generation PCIe SSD processor.

NVM Express is not a product, it's a specification:

The NVM Express 1.0 specification that defines an optimized register interface, command set and feature set for PCI Express® (PCIe®)-based Solid-State Drives (SSDs). The goal is to enable the broad adoption of SSDs using the PCIe interface.

http://www.nvmexpress.org/

[Nihility]

Flash technology is only getting worse and worse.

SLC -> MLC -> TLC , each progression caused a significant decrease in write cycles.
Even the reduction in process resolution (130nm, 90 nm, 65 nm etc.) causes a reduction in write cycles (drive lifespan as well).

There's a clear incentive for these companies to create drives that die after a few years and the way the tech is moving along, they seem to be doing just that.
I am fully aware that this is also necessary to reduce flash costs, but it's a worrying trend.

Edit: I'm not sure how accurate the following information is (wikipedia):

SLC NAND flash is typically rated at about 100k cycles (Samsung OneNAND KFW4G16Q2M)
MLC NAND flash used to be rated at about 5–10k cycles (Samsung K9G8G08U0M) but is now typically 1k - 3k cycles
TLC NAND flash is typically rated at about 100-500 cycles

100-500 cycles... seriously???

This post has been edited by Nihility: 04 November 2011 - 04:16 AM

[Brian]

zfisch, on 03 November 2011 - 06:41 PM, said:

NVM Express is not a product, it's a specification:

The NVM Express 1.0 specification that defines an optimized register interface, command set and feature set for PCI Express® (PCIe®)-based Solid-State Drives (SSDs). The goal is to enable the broad adoption of SSDs using the PCIe interface.

http://www.nvmexpress.org/

Fair enough.

[Brian]

Nihility, on 04 November 2011 - 04:13 AM, said:

Flash technology is only getting worse and worse.

SLC -> MLC -> TLC , each progression caused a significant decrease in write cycles.
Even the reduction in process resolution (130nm, 90 nm, 65 nm etc.) causes a reduction in write cycles (drive lifespan as well).

There's a clear incentive for these companies to create drives that die after a few years and the way the tech is moving along, they seem to be doing just that.
I am fully aware that this is also necessary to reduce flash costs, but it's a worrying trend.

Edit: I'm not sure how accurate the following information is (wikipedia):

SLC NAND flash is typically rated at about 100k cycles (Samsung OneNAND KFW4G16Q2M)
MLC NAND flash used to be rated at about 5–10k cycles (Samsung K9G8G08U0M) but is now typically 1k - 3k cycles
TLC NAND flash is typically rated at about 100-500 cycles

100-500 cycles... seriously???

100-500 write cycles is rubbish. With the software involved companies expect to get much more life out of lower quality NAND. I think some make this into a bigger concern than it is though, if a drive is rated to last 4 or 5 years, and it lasts 4 or 5 years, I'm not sure there's a problem, regardless of the theoretical write cap on the drive.

[Nihility]

Brian, on 04 November 2011 - 08:14 AM, said:

100-500 write cycles is rubbish. With the software involved companies expect to get much more life out of lower quality NAND.

Did OCZ state how many terabytes of writes they expect a drive with TLC to withstand?

[Brian]

No, that conference wasn't the forum for such a conversation. The drive hasn't even been formally announced, we just happened to be able to catch several news items to pass along to our readers. They're still working on the drive, and at least two months from production. I'd guess CES would be a convenient time to announce/release the drive.

[Nihility]

Good to know, thanks.

[Relax_nl]

What kind of conference was that? Financial oriented or technical oriented?

[continuum]

100-500 cycles? I thought we were seeing 2000-2500 cycles for 4-bit MLC... then again I can't remember which product those datasheets were for...