Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday August 18 2015, @07:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the 256k-should-be-enough-for-anybody dept.

Toshiba has showed off a NAND flash device using through-silicon vias (TSVs) to stack 16 NAND dies, a technology it announced earlier this month. From Tom's Hardware:

TSV technology removed the wire bonding from the edges of the die. Instead, the signal is passed through the entire stack vertically. Vertical NAND, often referred to as V-NAND or 3D NAND, differs from TSV, though. Nothing leads us to believe that the two technologies can't work together, but at this time we are unaware of any designs that merge the two technologies.

[...] Toshiba's partners are excited about this product for two reasons: The first is performance. PMC Sierra makes very high-performing NVMe SSDs that move the bottleneck from the PCIe interface to the flash itself. The Princeton controller uses 32 channels to address a large number of flash die and is a very expensive controller to manufacture. If the company is able to reach the same performance level with just 16 channels, the overall cost will drop. The capacity can remain the same because TSV allows Toshiba to stack twice the number of die in each package.

Performance is only one aspect of the overall datacenter equation, though. The upfront costs are minimal compared to the long term costs due to power consumption. PMC Sierra demonstrated a very wide gap in power efficiency between non-TSV Toggle mode flash and new TSV Toggle mode flash.

The use of TSV could help scale NAND capacity in the vertical dimension even further.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 18 2015, @08:12AM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday August 18 2015, @08:12AM (#224301) Homepage
    "flash die" - if that is being used as a plural, does that mean that "flash dice" must be the singular? How many sides does a flash dice have?

    "scale NAND capacity in the vertical dimension" - NAND capacity is either dimensionless (a raw number), or has the pseudo-dimension "bits" (compare "moles"). Neither of those options is spacial, so has no concept of horizontal versus vertical expansion. An increase in a spacial dimension wouldn't be useful, either, as real progress is made by increasing densities (such that the same capacity takes up less of a spacial dimension).

    And as a cherry on top, "PMC Sierra demonstrated a very wide gap in power efficiency". So, which way? Is the new tech 100 times worse? And how wide is wide? When judging a touching ball in snooker, a distance of 1000-th of the size of the table would be considered a very wide gap (you'd not even need to call the umpire, as it would be so obvious). So even if we're presuming the unstated, and that it's an improvement, is it a 10% improvement or a 10x improvement. Was the article writer's intention to actually communicate anything useful?
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   -1  
       Offtopic=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Offtopic' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   1  
  • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday August 18 2015, @08:42AM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Tuesday August 18 2015, @08:42AM (#224312) Homepage

    die n. a device for cutting or molding metal into a particular shape

    As for the rest, you'll have to synergise your blue-sky thinking to see that they've leveraged a whole new paradigm when it comes to enveloping the rhinoceros sandwich.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk
    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 18 2015, @12:11PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday August 18 2015, @12:11PM (#224375) Homepage
      Your "die" has plural "dies", though.

      However, you're right, I'll start synergising rhinoceros 2.0, don't forget 2.0, erm, beta, right away.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday August 18 2015, @12:19PM

      by wonkey_monkey (279) on Tuesday August 18 2015, @12:19PM (#224378) Homepage

      Yeah, yeah, that's not even the right definition of die for the context...

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk
      • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday August 18 2015, @05:07PM

        by Freeman (732) on Tuesday August 18 2015, @05:07PM (#224486) Journal

        In this case they are talking about the actual chip / die. https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/integrated-circuits/ [sparkfun.com] Interesting read that tells you what they mean by the word "die" in this context.

        --
        Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
  • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday August 18 2015, @09:52AM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday August 18 2015, @09:52AM (#224322) Journal

    My question would be...other than enterprise data cruncher workstations and servers who is gonna need this? Because I've found a standard SSD on SATA already goes faster than the average user can and its a hell of a lot cheaper. I recently upgraded the wife's PC with an SSD and even with her Phenom II system only having SATA-3 it still goes from pushing the button to ready to go in under 20 seconds and even large games like World Of Warships loads faster than she can even read what the objective is, and on my PC with SATA-6 the OS is ready to go literally before I am.

    So I'm starting to have the feeling that SSDs are gonna run into the same problems PCs have, in that the technology keeps on advancing while the jobs the users have to do simply cannot keep up. If anything all the average users really need is more space at a cheaper price as the speed of current SSDs, even the cheap ones has just gotten unreal.

    --
    ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 18 2015, @12:05PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 18 2015, @12:05PM (#224372)

      Yes, because enterprise technology never makes its way down to consumer products.

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 18 2015, @12:13PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday August 18 2015, @12:13PM (#224377) Homepage
      Never underestimate the amount of bloat that can be added in order to make blindingly fast technology slow.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday August 18 2015, @12:39PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday August 18 2015, @12:39PM (#224385) Journal

      I've got another story about NAND coming for you later.

      Here is a sneak preview:

      https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=9016 [soylentnews.org]
      http://www.theplatform.net/2015/08/17/in-a-decade-disk-is-dead-for-tier-one-storage/ [theplatform.net]

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday August 19 2015, @04:03AM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Wednesday August 19 2015, @04:03AM (#224778) Journal

        This is one area where I have to call BS, as the size of data from camera and video just keeps growing and growing at a pace that the SSDs just don't match, at least not at a price point Joe Average will pay. The way my customers have been going is the way I think computers will be going, with an SSD and a HDD on the desktop and an SSD with an external HDD on the laptop. This way they get the bulk storage all those pics and vids and shows and tunes require without having to spend insane-o money on a Tb SSD. Also never forget that RAM trumps all, no SSD comes close to the speed of RAM and with the price dropping like crazy on RAM its quite easy to build a system where the OS doesn't touch the drives once its booted.

        Will there be people that go all SSD? Sure such as those that don't give a single fuck about privacy, they'll probably just use the Win 10 OneDrive to store all their docs and pics and call it a day, but I have a feeling most folks will end up with both, as HDDs give you the space while SSDs give you the speed. Maybe Toshiba or Seagate will do what I thought should have been obvious 2 years ago, build a hybrid with 128GB-256Gb of SSD with a 3TB HDD so the OS and programs can be SSD while the data can be HDD but until that happens I'll keep advising my customers that having both is the best course.

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.