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Politics : RAMTRONIAN's Cache Inn

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To: niceguy767 who wrote (14311)	12/2/2008 7:28:40 AM
From: NightOwl	Read Replies (1) of 14464

SanDisk says it has a "Extreme Flash File System" and... *Secret Sauce* for its planned SSD: SanDisk thinks it can solve all three problems. By adding bits to a NAND cell it can increase capacity with 2-bit multi-level cell (2x MLC) technology here and higher-capacity 3- and 4-bit MLC coming. It has also come up with its Extreme Flash File System (ExtremeFFS) to accelerate random write speed by up to 100 times and so be much closer to sequential write speed. But it is not enough. SanDisk's Senior Director of Marketing, Don Barnetson, revealed this at a Tokyo press conference on 27th November, saying: "We need one more step of improvement besides ExtremeFFS." He didn't say what that was but he did say: "Please wait a little while for our announcement ... We are preparing a technology to solve these issues." That sounds pretty confident and senior directors of marketing don't tease us so unless something is real and pretty close. Why is it needed? An exacerbating factor is that NAND chip size is shrinking at the same time as cell bit count is rising; a hard trick to pull off. SanDisk 2-bit MLC flash is being made now with a 43nm process while 3-bit MLC chips have been made with a 56nm one. SanDisk is introducing its 3-bit and 4-bit MLC 43nm chip technology now, at the end of 2008, with an even smaller sub-40nm process coming into play towards the end of 2009. The 3x MLC 34nm chips have 32 Gbit capacities with the 4x ones having 64Gbit capacities. Increase the cell bit count and capacity per chip shoots up. Shrink the die size and capacity per wafer goes up. Costs goes down in both cases. That's what SanDisk wants, what it needs, but customers aren't going to buy the SSDs unless performance is overall way better than hard drives. The word is that 3x MLC NAND has lower rewrite performance than 2x MLC. Presumably 4x would be worse again. That's what the new technology is needed for, to make 3- and 4-bit MLC flash acceptable in the performance stakes. theregister.co.uk I do love "needy" people so... Although... it would be nice if they weren't so dang slow. But then... I guess that's why they need another "technology" to juice those write speeds so much. 0\|0

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