Western Digital Announces Four Bit Per Cell 64-Layer 3D NAND Flash
by Billy Tallis on July 25, 2017 8:00 AM EST
Western Digital's SanDisk subsidiary and Toshiba have a long history of jointly developing and manufacturing NAND flash memory. While that relationship has been strained by Toshiba's recent financial troubles and attempts to sell of their share of the memory business, the companies are continuing to develop new flash memory technology and are still taking turns making new announcements. In recent months both companies have started sampling SSDs using their 64-layer BiCS3 TLC 3D NAND and have announced that their next generation BiCS4 3D NAND will be a 96-layer design.
Yesterday Western Digital made a small announcement about their other main strategy for increasing density: storing more bits per memory cell. Western Digital will introduce four bit per cell QLC parts built on their 64-layer BiCS3 process, with a capacity of 768Gb (96GB) per die. This is a substantial increase over the 512Gb BiCS3 TLC parts that will be hitting the market soon, and represents not only an increase in in bits stored per memory cell but an increase in the overall size of the memory array. These new 3D QLC NAND parts are clearly intended to offer the best price per GB that Western Digital can manage, but Western Digital claims performance will still be close to that of their 3D TLC NAND. Western Digital's announcement did not mention write endurance, but Toshiba's earlier announcement of 3D QLC NAND claimed endurance of 1000 program/erase cycles, far higher than industry expectations of 100-150 P/E cycles for 3D QLC and comparable to 3D TLC NAND.
Western Digital has not announced any specific products based on QLC NAND flash, but they will be exhibiting both removable media and SSDs using QLC NAND at Flash Memory Summit August 8-10. Western Digital's CTO will be delivering a keynote presentation at FMS on August 8, so more details are likely to be revealed in two weeks.
Western Digital's roadmaps also include plans for QLC parts on their 96-layer BiCS4 process, with capacities up to 1Tb (128GB) per die. BiCS4 production is scheduled to ramp up over 2018 and 2019 with the QLC parts expected to arrive later in the cycle, so Western Digital's first-generation 3D QLC based on the BiCS3 process will probably be their highest-density flash memory in mass production for over a year.
Source: Western Digital
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marsupilami - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link
OT but the website is getting more and more of a pain to read with all the ads everywhere, and what worries me is that it' getting worse by the day. I know that you guys have no control over it but hopefully someone that does will read this and come to his senses...rtho782 - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link
This is why I no longer turn off adblock even for sites I like.shabby - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link
Ads? What are those!Ryan Smith - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link
The feedback is always appreciated. In the meantime, we haven't had any major ad changes in the last couple of months. Was there something in particular that was bothering you?marsupilami - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link
Maybe it's because of the proxy we use at work (not sure, I didn't set it up) but the giant banner on top and video ads in particular seem new to me.Anyway, have to agree with rtho782 on this one, it might be time to turn adblock back on.
Ariknowsbest - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link
On mobile the ads a fine. From the web section on the other hand don't ad any value.Dahak - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link
Yea, I am getting the similar thing. Getting the video ad at the top and bottom of the page and then just above the comments section a big ad that is about the the same size as the article with "From the Web" 3x3 gridshabby - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link
I just disabled my adblocker and the fake news ads are the worst, the video ones too, the rest of the ads are acceptable but the video/fake news ones have to go.Dr. Swag - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link
The from the web ads are just annoying, though I know you guys already know that. What really bothers me is that on my desktop and laptop if I open anandtech without adblock and wait a minute or so, scrolling stutters horribly. It's so bad that I've been forced to turn on adblock to keep this from happening. Doesn't happen on mobile though.Also anandtech uses like 600 mb of ram when I'm on the home page, which is kind of insane for a web page.
Sivar - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link
I have the same experience. I turn off adblock every so often because I want to support my favorite hardware review site, but even my 6-core i7 with 32GB of RAM and a gaming card stutters horribly, often freezing for seconds at a time, as I try to load and then scroll the site.