Forget the 60 TB SSD. Toshiba is teasing a possible 100 TB SSD:
The Flash Memory Summit saw Toshiba deliver a presentation about quad level cell (QLC) technology – adding substantially to the prospect of a product being delivered in the "near future". We have heard about this QLC (4bits/cell NAND technology) quite recently.
After Seagate tantalised us with a 60TB SSD, along comes Toshiba with a 100TB QLC SSD concept.
Flash Memory Summit attendees saw Toshiba presenters put flesh on the bones and envisage a QLC 3D SSD with a PCIe gen 3 interface and more than 100TB of capacity. It would have 3GB/sec sequential read bandwidth and 1GB/sec sequential write bandwidth. It would do random reading and writing at 50,000 and 14,000 IOPS respectively. The active state power consumption would be 9 watts, the same as a 3.5-inch, 8TB SATA 6Gbit/s disk drive, while the idle power consumption be less than 100 mWatts, compared to the disk drive's 8 watts.
Even if the "near future" isn't so near, or the final capacity does not end up at around 100 TB, it is still interesting to see 3D NAND technology enabling a serious push for 4-bits-per-cell NAND, which would normally face endurance issues.
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Seagate has put a new lower limit on the maximum amount of NAND flash that can be crammed into a 3.5" enclosure, by demonstrating a 60 TB solid state drive:
With the Nytro XP7200 moving toward production, Seagate has brought out another SSD tech demo with eye-catching specifications. The unnamed SAS SSD packs 60TB of 3D TLC into a 3.5" drive. In order to connect over a thousand dies of Micron's 3D TLC NAND to a single SSD controller, Seagate has introduced ONFi bridge chips to multiplex the controller's NAND channels across far more dies than would otherwise be possible. The rest of the specs for the 60TB SSD look fairly mundane and make for a drive that's better suited to read-intensive workloads, but the capacity puts even the latest hard drives to shame.
The 60TB SSD is currently just a technology demonstration, and won't be appearing as a product until next year. When it does, it will probably have a very tiny market, but for now it will give Seagate some bragging rights.
Previously: Seagate Unveils Fastest Ever Solid State Drive
Toshiba continues to look for a buyer for its memory business:
South Korea's SK Hynix Inc has entered the running for a stake in Toshiba Corp's memory chip business, seeing an opportunity to gain on rivals in the booming NAND market, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
The world's No. 2 memory chip maker had submitted an initial bid, although the size of the stake it wanted to acquire had not been decided, the source told Reuters, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly on the deal.
[...] Toshiba aims to raise more than 200 billion yen ($1.7 billion) from the less-than 20 percent stake in its memory business, sources have said. The sale is part of a broader sell-off to cover multi-billion dollar writedowns stemming from its U.S. nuclear power unit.
Previously: Toshiba Teasing QLC 3D NAND and TSV for More Layers
Toshiba Envisions a 100 TB QLC SSD in the "Near Future"
Toshiba Considers NAND Business Split; Samsung Delays Release of 4 TB SSDs
A joint bid by the U.S. company Broadcom Limited and the Japanese government may keep Toshiba's chip business out of the hands of China or South Korea:
A Japanese government-backed fund and policy bank are considering a joint bid with Broadcom Ltd for Toshiba Corp's semiconductor business, a move that would vault the U.S. chipmaker into the lead to buy the prized unit, the Asahi newspaper said on Wednesday.
A bid by Innovation Network Corp of Japan and the Development Bank of Japan with Broadcom would appear to be aimed at preventing Toshiba's chip technology from going to rivals in China or South Korea, the Asahi said, citing an unidentified source.
INCJ Chairman Toshiyuki Shiga said on Tuesday the fund was looking at the chip auction although it had not participated in the first round of bidding. People familiar with the matter have told Reuters INCJ might invest in the business as a minority partner - a move that would help the government prevent a sale to bidders it deems risky to national security.
Previously: Toshiba and SanDisk Announce 48-Layer 256 Gb 3D NAND
Toshiba in Trouble
Toshiba Teasing QLC 3D NAND and TSV for More Layers
Toshiba Envisions a 100 TB QLC SSD in the "Near Future"
Toshiba Considers NAND Business Split; Samsung Delays Release of 4 TB SSDs (WD is a bidder)
SK Hynix to Bid for Toshiba's Memory Business
Toshiba Nuked Half its Assets
Huge Nuclear Cost Overruns Push Toshiba's Westinghouse Into Bankruptcy
Toshiba Warns That its Survival is at Risk
Samsung will use QLC NAND to create a 128 TB SSD:
For now, let's talk about the goods we'll see over the next year. The biggest news to come out of the new Samsung campus is QLC flash. Samsung's customers set performance and endurance specifications and don't care about the underlying technology as long as those needs are met. Samsung says it can achieve its targets with its first generation QLC (4-bits per cell) V-NAND technology.
The first product pre-announcement (it doesn't have a product number yet) is a 128TB SAS SSD using QLC technology with a 1TB die size. The company plans to go beyond 16 die per package using chip stacking technology that will yield 32 die per package, a flash industry record.
NAND revenue has increased 55% in one year.
Previously: Seagate Demonstrates a 60 TB 3.5" SSD
Toshiba Envisions a 100 TB QLC SSD in the "Near Future"
Western Digital Announces 96-Layer 3D NAND, Including Both TLC and QLC
Toshiba's 3D QLC NAND Could Reach 1000 P/E Cycles
The Reality of SSD Capacity: No-One Wants Over 16TB Per Drive
One of the expanding elements of the storage business is that the capacity per drive has been ever increasing. Spinning hard-disk drives are approaching 20 TB soon, while solid state storage can vary from 4TB to 16TB or even more, if you're willing to entertain an exotic implementation. Today at the Data Centre World conference in London, I was quite surprised to hear that due to managed risk, we're unlikely to see much demand for drives over 16TB.
Speaking with a few individuals at the show about expanding capacities, storage customers that need high density are starting to discuss maximum drive size requirements based on their implementation needs. One message starting to come through is that storage deployments are looking at managing risk with drive size – sure, a large capacity drive allows for high-density, but in a drive failure of a large drive means a lot of data is going to be lost.
[...] Ultimately the size of the drive and the failure rate leads to element of risks and downtime, and aside from engineering more reliant drives, the other variable for risk management is drive size. 16TB, based on the conversations I've had today, seems to be that inflection point; no-one wants to lose 16TB of data in one go, regardless of how often it is accessed, or how well a storage array has additional failover metrics.
Related: Toshiba Envisions a 100 TB QLC SSD in the "Near Future"
Samsung Announces a 128 TB SSD With QLC NAND
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Fishscene on Thursday August 11 2016, @01:33PM
These super-high capacity drives are only going to drive down the cost of drives across the board. It might take a bit, but I for one look forward to high capacity and lower prices.
:D
I know I am not God, because every time I pray to Him, it's because I'm not perfect and thankful for what He's done.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 11 2016, @01:46PM
Putting out higher capacities with newer and denser varieties of vertical NAND is definitely how SSD prices will be driven down.
Slickdeals is down so I can't get the "good" prices, but a quick search finds that 1 TB SSDs are just under $300 (I would guess you could find it as low as $220 on sale), and 2 TB SSDs are slightly above $600. 4 TB SSD prices are still in la-la-land for now.
New generations of 3D NAND may lower $/GB as much as 30%. We can also see a clear path for 3D NAND density to double a few times (that includes an increase in layers to ~96-128, and string stacking [theregister.co.uk] to stack 2-3 dies), whereas pre-3D NAND was facing insurmountable endurance issues.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Thursday August 11 2016, @03:35PM
I suspect the Toshiba announcements are 10% vaporware and 90% fraudware to pay old penalty fines and stay afloat.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday August 11 2016, @04:41PM
I'm gonna need to call my ISP ... Don't have enough bandwidth yet to download that much porn.
PSA: Call your doctor is your erection lasts longer than 4GB.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 11 2016, @05:00PM
This is a good point. (Both are!) We're soon back to the station wagon hurtling down the road loaded with ssds.
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/02/sneakernet-beats-internet.html [lowtechmagazine.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 11 2016, @05:21PM
It might take a bit
Or, in this case, 60~100 TB!
:)
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday August 11 2016, @05:41PM
Don't you mean 480-800Tb?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 11 2016, @07:45PM
Am I reading the cycle rate on a per cell r/e? 100?! Yuck!
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday August 11 2016, @08:01PM
If you divide 100TB by 4, you get 25TB in SLC mode.
That is actually very close to the number you get when dividing the Seagate 60TB tech demo by 3 to get SLC mode.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 11 2016, @11:27PM
It would have 3GB/sec sequential read bandwidth and 1GB/sec sequential write bandwidth
What about security of the user? What if your OS decides it wants to encrypt everything on the drive, or delete all files permanently?
What if the OS decides that the data says something against 'teh government', speaks of overthrowing the jewish puppets and putting the people back in control? Who or what is going to protect the user's data in such an event?
What if you're using the drive as a back-up and attach to the computer to transfer files and the OS says all is good, but later you find all your important data missing. That data might have been educational material to promote a world free from oppression and free from lies.
In old tech, you could tell if the OS was doing something fishy by looking at the drive light and hearing the drive being written to or read. Now you won't hear a thing and your data will be gone or uploaded or replaced with zeros.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Saturday August 13 2016, @05:09AM
Not sure if trolling...
Backups. Geographically separate, off-line, verified backups. (At least for your important data like encryption keys.)
Stop using proprietary software. Use Free(dom) Software [gnu.org] instead.
Back-ups must be verified. My own back-ups failed this step.
My current plan is to set up a back-up server with ZFS backed by doubly-redundant disk drives. That way, if one drive fails, the drives are still redundant. A fourth drive would be used to serialize incremental back-ups.
With full-disk encryption, you can effectively delete the data by deleting the encryption key. This will likely fit in one 4k sector. (You do have that key (or the data it is protecting) backed up, right?)
Of course, with proper back-ups, your sensitive information is more likely to be compromised. I am thinking of using public-key encryption on the portable hard-drive.