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Western Digital Begins to Sample QLC BiCS4: 1.33 Tbit 96-Layer 3D NAND
Western Digital has started sampling its 96-layer 3D NAND chips featuring QLC architecture that stores four bits per cell. The chip happens to be the world's highest-capacity 3D NAND device. The company expects to commence volume shipments of this memory chip already this calendar year.
Western Digital's 96-layer BICS4 3D QLC NAND chip can store up to 1.33 Tb of raw data, or around 166 GB. The IC will be initially used for consumer products Western Digital sells under the SanDisk brand, so think of memory cards (e.g., high-capacity SD and microSD products), USB drives, and some other devices. The manufacturer expects its 3D QLD[sic] NAND memory to be used in a variety of applications, including retail, mobile, embedded, client, and enterprise, but does not elaborate on timing at this point.
The 1.33-Tb BICS4 IC is Western Digital's second-gen 3D QLC NAND device. Last year the company announced its BICS3 64-layer 3D QLC chips featuring a 768 Gb capacity, but it is unclear whether they have ever been used for commercial products. Meanwhile, it is clear that the device was used to learn about 3D QLC behavior in general (i.e., endurance, read errors, retention, etc.)
[...] What is noteworthy is that officially the BiCS4 range was to include both TLC and QLC ICs with capacities ranging from 256 Gb to 1 Tb, so the 1.33 Tb IC is a surprising addition to the lineup which signals Western Digital's confidence of its technology.
Recent products have been using 512 Gb per die NAND, with 768 Gb and 1 Tb on the horizon. Samsung's announced 128 TB SSD was supposed to use 1 Tb 3D QLC dies, so ~1.33 Tb dies could bring that capacity to about 170 TB. Given a couple more generations of NAND or some fancy die/package stacking, and we will probably see a 1 petabyte SSD.
Related: SK Hynix Developing 96 and 128-Layer TLC 3D NAND
Western Digital Announces 96-Layer 3D NAND, Including Both TLC and QLC
WD Announces 64-Layer 3D QLC NAND With 768 Gb Per Die, to be Shown at Flash Memory Summit
Samsung Announces a 128 TB SSD With QLC NAND
Expect 20-30% Cheaper NAND in Late 2018
Samsung Announces a 30.72 TB 2.5" SSD
Micron Launches First QLC NAND SSD
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday July 23 2018, @02:01PM
I don't know what "holographic with haptic feedback" will require, but 360° virtual reality video could have vast storage requirements. 4K 360° video apparently requires about 1 GB [quora.com] per minute [vuze.camera]. Let's say that we bump that to "8K" and use fancy compression to only double the size to 2 GB per minute. A petabyte could only store less than a year of 8K 360° porn.
That's for "real" video. Photorealistic and dynamic 3D models could require much less storage and respond to your movements or even words. All that storage could be freed up and filled with Street View data so that you could get virtually fucked on any park bench on the planet.
When it comes to what already exists, YouPorn had over 0.1 PB in 2017 [gizmodo.com]. Pornhub's 2017 data report [pornhub.com] doesn't list their total data storage, but does estimate that around 68 years of video was uploaded just that year, which could translate to many petabytes if it was upgraded to 360°/VR. Searches for VR porn jumped in popularity and they went from 30 to 1,800 videos in the VR category in 2016 [observer.com].
Somebody out there recorded webcam streams (a mix of porn and nonporn activity) and managed to store 1.8 petabytes [vice.com] on Amazon Web Services. A lot of the webcams were likely potato quality. 720p30 is typical for a laptop webcam.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]