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What's TLC is SLC Again: MEMXPRO Introduces PC32 Full-Drive Pseudo-SLC SSDs

Pseudo-SLC caches for TLC-based SSDs are almost as old as TLC NAND itself, serving as a simple and practical solution to TLC's lower sustained throughput. But like all caches, pseudo-SLC caches have a finite size; and once you run over it, you're back to directly hitting the TLC. So what is a user or system builder to do if they need a drive with SLC-like performance all the time? For a while, the answer to that has been MLC drives, but with MLC slowly but surely on its way out as well, other solutions are needed. And to that end, MEMXPRO is introducing a series of new drives that go the opposite direction, embracing pseudo-SLC mode to its very core by making the entire drive pseudo-SLC.

Based on 64-layer 3D TLC memory, MEMXPRO's PC32 drives use drive-wide pseudo-SLC mode to give the drives MLC-like performance and reliability. This setup is overkill for most applications, but for use cases that require SSDs with long lifespans, and high [durability] – MEMXPRO's specialty – the PC32 fills an important niche.

The MEMXPRO PC32 drives in are based on the Silicon Motion SM2262EN controller as well as Micron’s B17A 64-layer 3D TLC NAND memory, which is rated for 10,000 P/E cycles. By putting the drives in pseudo-SLC mode, the manufacturer is able to increase their durability to 40,000 P/E cycles, albeit at the cost of capacity. Since TLC NAND that offers 3-bits of storage per cell is otherwise reduced to 1-bit per cell, the drives are available in capacities from just 80 GB to 320 GB. As for throughput, with the high-end controller used for the drive, MEMXPRO has rated the drives' sustained sequential read and write performance 3,250 and 2,980 MB/s respectively, which is in line with other modern SSDs featuring a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface.

If you can figure out what kind of die size this uses (e.g. 512 Gb), you could forecast how much capacity pseudo-SLC drives of given dimensions can store in the future. NAND will eventually reach at least 256 layers, and that can be multiplied with string stacking and other techniques.

Bloomberg looks kinda like O'Connell. He works it like a republican, all the attacks are just water off a duck's back. Not a care in the world. No doubt he was amused by all the squawking. When there is only one, he will move in for the kill.

I wonder what a Bloomberg/Gabbard ticket would do.

Now he says he won't release his medical records.

We have released quite as much documentation as any other candidate has... I think we have released a detailed medical report and I'm comfortable on what we have done...

Typical arrogant politician. What an ass... That's a great way to shed support and drop out "gracefully" before any possible dirt comes out. Maybe now the debate will get interesting if anybody has the guts to hammer on him for this.

Whatever, if he were to get the nomination, Bloomberg will run as an "independent" [he is more anti-Sanders than anti-Trump] with full DNC support and throw it to Trump. With only decades old leftovers on the ticket, it looks more and more like that's the game

A joke:

A Wall Street fraudster, a crooked cop and a politician walk into a bar.

President Trump says "get those bars out of the way, these men deserve to be free!"

From ‘Junk Bond King’ To Abramoff Pal, Trump’s Pardon List Dredges Swamp

Receiving pardons or commutations today:

The "Junk Bond King" Michael Milken, a Wall Street banker convicted of securities fraud and insider trading.
Rod Blagojevich, convicted of corruption for trying to sell Obama's vacated Senate seat.
David Safavian, the guy who was convicted for obstructing the Jack Abramoff investigation.
Crooked New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who the mob bribed.

SpaceX nailed the launch but missed a landing on Monday [Updated]

SpaceX launches fifth batch of Starlink satellites, misses booster landing

Despite the reduced workload, Falcon 9’s reusable first-stage booster missed the droneship “Of Course I Still Love You,” splashing down nearby in the Atlantic Ocean.

On the live stream, it looked like a "space snake" came off of the booster. Critical component?

If the booster is too salty or smashed to be refurbished, that is an expensive batch of Starlink sats.

2 more launches to go until the lower bound for launching a service. 8 more for "moderate coverage".

I saw this blog post on the Kodi news ticker on LibreELEC:

In Defence of Our Good Name

Kodi is undoubtedly synonymous with streaming 🏴‍☠️piracy🏴‍☠️, although it is useful software even when "clean" and you can do a decent amount with the official add-ons repo (YouTube, Pluto.TV, internet radio, etc.).

Are they going through the obligatory motions to distance themselves from 🏴‍☠️yarrrrr🏴‍☠️ or are they legitimately pissed off? It's probably a bit of both.

Exclusive: Intel Xe HP 4-Tile 500W GPU EU Count Leaked, No It’s Not 512

This is a follow-up to an earlier story I linked.

• Intel Xe HP (Gen 12.5) 1-Tile GPU: 512 EUs [Est: 4096 Cores, 12.2 TFLOPs assuming 1.5GHz, 150W]
• Intel Xe HP (Gen 12.5) 2-Tile GPU: 1024 EUs [Est: 8192 Cores, 20.48 TFLOPs assuming 1.25 GHz, 300W]
• Intel Xe HP (Gen 12.5) 4-Tile GPU: 2048 EUs [Est: 16,384 Cores, 36 TFLOPs assuming 1.1 GHz, 400W/500W]

That's 81.3, 68.3, and 72-90 GFLOPS/Watt, if accurate.

Compare to about 44.2 GFLOPS/W for Radeon RX 5700, 53.8 for RTX 2080 Ti, or 116.3 for Tesla T4. I'm just getting those numbers by dividing the FP32 GFLOPS by TDP, so YMMV.

400-500 Watts sounds extreme but it might not be as hard to cool as you think since the die area of a 4-tile multi-chip module (basically chiplets) would be huge. An advantage of the MCM approach is better yields. It would be difficult to create a 1,600 mm² monolithic GPU, while putting four 400 mm² tiles together is easier.

If this is a success, Intel will probably shoot for a design with 8 tiles eventually (2024?).

Once long ago, I was given this SOAP API to interact with.

Now I have no love of SOAP, but at least it fairly rigidly defines the API across different programming languages and technology stacks.

The well defined API consisted of a single function that accepted and returned a string. You passed it JSON and it returned JSON.

But it is a real SOAP API!!! Yes!, it really is SOAP I tell you!

It also had no real provision to return or deal with errors. How about an error field in every result that I can check? And with a numerical code AND a meaningful message that I can pass on to the end user? (And record in my server logs.)

There were a lot of actual underlying API calls present. (in JSON form) (But it's really SOAP I was told.) These API calls were somewhat documented; mechanically from PHP. The real implementation didn't always comply with the documentation however. Results sometimes were, ahem, loosey goosey. (like php maybe?) Over time the returned JSON structures changed from what they originally once were -- without any notice to anyone that might be using this API. There was clearly nothing rigidly enforcing the format on the other end.

Definitely not maintained in the more formal way I would have done it. With API version numbers for newer versions of the official API.

Eventually this other thing fell into disuse.

A number of Republican senators joined Democrats on Thursday to vote in favor of a resolution barring President Donald Trump from taking further military actions against Iran without congressional approval.

The resolution, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, was heavily opposed by Trump. It passed in a 55 to 45 vote, marking a rare bipartisan rebuke of the president a little over a week after the Senate voted to acquit Trump in his impeachment trial. Eight Republicans ultimately voted in favor of the resolution: Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Mike Lee of Utah, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Todd Young of Indiana.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer celebrated the success of the resolution in a tweet, stating, "With Senator Kaine's War Powers Resolution now passed, a bipartisan majority of Senators just sent a clear shot across the bow saying President Trump cannot wage war without Congress's explicit approval."

Meanwhile, Kaine tweeted, "This is a strong bipartisan message from the Senate that we will uphold our constitutional duty to deliberate and vote before sending our troops into harm's way."

The Senate on Thursday passed a resolution that would block Trump from going to war with Iran without congressional approval.

In self-defense, coalition troops returned fire. The situation was de-escalated and is under investigation

How can the aggressor claim "self defense"??

Just one of those sweet mysteries of life, I guess.

The Syrian war, now in its ninth year, has pulled in international players including the U.S., Russia and Turkey.

That's bullshit. The Syrian war was started by international players. Nice pretext to get "pulled in", eh?

Ah well, in November we'll find out how many people give a damn. There's really no reason to expect any different from last time though. It will be around the usual five percent