World's first 128Gb 20nm NAND flash could pack 2TB into a 2.5" SSD

[DainBramaged]

Intel and Micron's joint venture IMFT has announced that it has produced a 128Gb die. A package combining eight such dies together would be small enough to fit on a fingertip and boast an unprecedented 128GB capacity. Mass production will start in the first half of next year, and devices using the new dies are likely to start shipping in 2013.

IMFT also announced that it had started mass production of a 64Gb 20nm die. This part was first announced in April of this year. Consumer delivery should start in the middle of next year.

The 128Gb parts will take longer to reach consumers because in addition to having a larger capacity, they also include a new interface and page size. NAND flash dies are organized internally into pages, and pages are organized into blocks. Read and write operations occur a page at a time; erase operations have to be performed a block at a time.

Current flash chips, including the 64Gb parts that IMFT has started mass producing, use a page size of 8,192 bytes. The 128Gb dies increase this to 16,384 bytes. As a result, controllers and drive firmware will have to be modified to accommodate the new page size.

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/12/worlds-first-128gb-20nm-nand-flash-could-pack-25tb-into-a-25-ssd.ars

[AmericaIsGreat]

1. Nerd drool

SSDs are the best. 2 TB in a 2.5" drive would be amaaaazing.

[ret5hd]

2. for the non-nerds: what are the advantages of ssd's other than size?

why should i prefer one in my desktop, where size doesn't really matter. is it reliability? i haven't had much problems there either.

thanks in advance.

[DainBramaged]

4. I have one in a netbook, 60GB

From the time I hit the power button to Windows 7 log in is 20 SECONDS. It made the netbook perform like a real laptop.

[DontTreadOnMe]

5. SPEED

A SDD drive has instant access, like a RAM memory chip. Much faster than any hard drive.

A user can configure the SSD to auto load the entire OS on start-up, which would mean your computer would just "turn on" like a light switch... no waiting for the Operating System to load. This is why iPhones and iPads turn on so quickly and are ready to use instantly, they use similar memory based storage.

Memory intensive apps like Adobe PhotoShop or video editing, or databases will run much faster.

On portable devices, like laptop, SSD save battery power.

There are many more advantages... say goodbye to hard drives. The limitation of SSD was capacity, now that they are going to manufacture 2TB SSD drives -- all hard drives under 2TB are obsolete.

When SSD drives first came out they were VERY expensive. They 256GB ones are still expensive. But you can get a 128GB for about $100.

When the 2TB SSD hit the market, they will probably be $1000+... and within a year will be down to $300. Currently a 2TB SATA hard drive is $100.

[BadgerKid]

9. Currently a poor time to buy hard drives.

When the 2TB SSD hit the market, they will probably be $1000+... and within a year will be down to $300. Currently a 2TB SATA hard drive is $100.

2TB hard drives should cost as little as $80-100 but currently cost around $160. The floods in southeast Asia (Thailand?) is constraining supply.

[DCKit]

6. Faster access = almost instant startup...

even with MS's bloated products.

[Tesha]

7. Flash drives read data much faster than conventional magnetic drives...

...and write about as fast.

They start and stop instantly, consume almost no power
when stopped, and much less power when running.

They're smaller and silent.

Unfortunately, they're still a lot more expensive and it's
still something of an unknown how long data stored on
them will last.

Tesha

[AmericaIsGreat]

8. SIze isn't actually an advantage

Unless you're putting it in a desktop since standard laptop drives are all 2.5" (although there are a few 1.8" drives).

The advantage of SSD that is that the device has no moving parts, where-as traditional drives have a platter that spins with an arm that has to seek when accessing info on the drive. None of that in the SSD; it's just flash memory, so, in addition to being hell of a lot faster, they are also silent, less susceptible to damage if the laptop gets dropped/bumped, and they produce basically no heat (heat is the #1 enemy of computer parts).

Reliability actually may not have been advantage early on as some of the first SSDs suffered fatal errors (though typically early on so you could get a warranty replacement) but today they are just as reliable if not more than traditional drives.

The performance is the biggest thing, not only with respect to opening files and applications but also copying files, installing and uninstalling applications, installing operating systems and of course booting up and shutting down (an SSD can literally speed up the time between when you turn on your computer and when you're able to start using it by minutes).

I would absolutely recommend it for anyone with a desktop or laptop unless your desktop is really old (in which case it probably won't have the necessary connections for an SSD anyway).

Just to give you an idea of how much better the performance is: my previous set up had two, 10,000rpm hard drives working in what's called RAID mode (which essentially uses both drives as one to increase speed). This is considerably faster than what the average person has in their computer which is usually a 7200rpm single drive. So my setup was already a lot faster. I now have an SSD and it makes those two drives look like technology from the Bronze Age.

[eppur_se_muova]

11. Somewhere in there should be lower power consumption ...

which also means longer working time on batteries. Eventually, SSD will become the standard, and lighter, smaller batteries will become more acceptable as the working times will be adequate despite the smaller charge. Good news for those who like subnotebooks, particularly.

[Posteritatis]

10. As others said, it's the speed factor

Hitting the power button to my logged-in desktop is about seven seconds on my current computer, which still floors me every time that happens.

SSDs do tend to have more fixed life expectancies than conventional hard drives, though, which scale with their use but are a lot more this-far-and-no-further. The most common way to handle those is to use a smallish SSD for your operating system and a few major programs, and keep the rest on the other drive(s).

[Ian David]

3. I could fit all my porn on one of those! n/t

[krispos42]

12. Nice. Very nice indeed.

If I get this new job, I'll be buying a new computer next year.