micron crucial new 3d tlc drives hit the market soon

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/crucial-mx300-750-gb-leak,31670.html

again, 3d tlc is the next technology of ssds capable of enough capacity

the technology called planar mlc is obsolete but will still be sold as budget.

make sure not to listen to insane know it alls that dont know what they are talking about regarding what was used in flash drives 6 years ago etc.
If you are buying a new ssd you absolutely want one of the new 3d vnand tlc drives just coming out. anything that says mlc is going to be out of date and verified less reliable.

so those analyzing the market will note that first samsung then sandisk released one.

then intel announced one but they buy thier nand from micron normally. now micron will start selling their 3d tlc drives.

 

You are completely hopeless.

6 years ago SLC was the nand to buy. Why? Because it has (still) the highest endurance, needs the lowest voltage to program/erase and is the most reliable and stable nand possible, but yeah; the price is what kept it out of most consumers hands and platforms. But this was the nand to get if you wanted to get what SSD's were promising back then: low power requirements, faster than HDD performance and longevity that never came into question.

If anyone is buying a new SSD today they want the fastest performance possible at a capacity that works for them and their workflows - not marketing fluff/bs that means less than the knowledge you're displaying about them.

TLC is more destructive to nand with each erase/write (because it requires higher voltage), has orders of magnitude less endurance than SLC and MLC variants and has obvious issues with consistency in heavy workloads (a windows update qualifies as a 'heavy workload' for an SSD). Pseudo SLC does little to offset these negative (and it can only do so for mere seconds at a time... sigh... before performance falls to HDD levels for the rest of the workload (usually hours if not tens of minutes for most people).

The capacity increase that TLC offers does offset some of the above negatives. But the prices of SSD's with TLC nand are still not low enough to even begin considering them when the 'old' tech MLC drives, proven and with superior performance, are still available for almost the same price (and on sales; even less).

You are also wrong that 3D TLC nand is the next big thing. So wrong.

3D XPoint tech is what will replace the worlds current SSD's (yeah; even the PCIe variants). Not today and maybe not even this year, but SSD's have been stuck at their peak (hampered by SATAIII) for many years now.

3D TLC nand is not what is going to save them.

 

@stamar it's an entry-level drive. And I second the opinion that you're hopeless.

 

The highest endurance drive offered to the public, is in fact, a SSD from 2009-2010 era known as the Intel X25-E, the 64GB edition. I think there was a report somewhere ( will try to find) where it finally died after 8.9PB (yes, PB) of write cycles. SLC was abandoned due to cost of making them in higher capacities, not because it was a poor technology. MLC stepped in, and while it wasn't as durable as SLC (I think highest write cycles endured was between 2-3PB), it offered much higher capacities and higher performance (though I'm sure the same could have been done with SLC, but it would have been priced astronomically).

It seems now we are at that bridge again, with the MLC-TLC divide happening at the 1TB storage mark. Very few 1TB MLC drives are out there, and they still $$$$, especially when stacked against their TLC counter parts, and it's like that for a reason....MLC is superior to TLC, just like SLC is superior to MLC. It just got to the point where it is too expensive to make more performance and capacity improvements in MLC, so manufacturers are starting to move to TLC.

I personally refuse to use TLC drives in any of my systems, but like tiller said, it's the 3D X-Point tech that will be the savior, not TLC lol

 

There is 3d mlc on sale only from Samsung.
But eventually all the manufacturers will have it.

All the 3d tlc drives have a much longer mean time between failure than the mlc planar drives.

Your all sadly ignorant.
There will be a point this year where none of the ssds for sale are called mlc as all mlc drives are obsolete

( except the Samsung 950 pro 960 pro)
Yes all ssds will be 3d in the near future except budget entries.

And all 3d vnand ssds will be what is called 3d vnand tlc.

There's no known test where vnand actually wearing out at this point in an ssd what normally dies is the controller.

The 3d vnand chips already come with 5 year warranty and longer mtbf than planar mlc
But if there is even an endurance test of 3d tlc vs 3d mlc the only way to do it would be to test a Samsung 850 evo vs a Samsung 850 pro. 2tbsize

Welcome to tech.

 

There are 5 vnand manufacturers in the world.
None of them will make planar mlc into 2017.
All of them will make primarily 3d vnand tlc. All 5. Some sooner than later.
Or they will be out of business.

To say it's not the next thing in ssds is out of touch with planet earth

There will be essentially no planarmlcs ssds for sale as new within a year.
No one who can read will want one.


So I can't even give you a percentage. By a year from now 90 plus percent of all ssds for sale as new will be 3d tlc.

And someone stuck on stupid that needs to have mlc in their ssd because that was what made sense a few years ago.... Will have to buy Samsung pro or 's unknown micron ssd

Based on tests of planar mlc from years ago.

 

Errors like this seriously undercut the credibility of your statements.

If you're going to insult everyone, you could at least re-read what you wrote before posting.

 

Please, if they are wrong, it should be trivial to pull up data and resources which back up your claims, right?

Personally, I'm not as extreme about TLC as the above posters, however I'm on board with the fact that TLC doesn't last as long as previous technologies and (at least some TLC drives) performing like HDDS in terms of seq reads and writes. Currently own two MLC drives (Intel 320 and 330) and given the average amount of writes MLC can take and my usage, I expect those drives to still work by the time I start collecting Social Security in a few decades (assuming SATA isn't obsolete by then).

I have an early TLC drive in my sister's computer (Samsung 840) and while it''s only somewhat better than HDDs (though she wouldn't know any better anyway), the only outstanding thing about it is its physical durability (though that''s common across all SSDs). If I were to buy a new SSD and it ends up being TLC, be sure I'll benchmark the cap out of it and RMA it if it doesn't meet the OEM's performance numbers.

----------

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/samsung-ssd-840-testing-the-endurance-of-tlc-nand

 

I will play a small role as the devils advocate (against myself...) here and somewhat agree with what stamar has posted (again) in this thread with the following caveats:

I agree that 3D NAND (TLC or not) is the next evolutionary step of SSD's.

I can also agree that Planar NAND will be obsolete as quickly as a few months to a couple of years from now.

And I too agree that the products we were able to buy a few short years ago will never be seen (at least not in the consumer space) ever again (fleabay availability excluded... gag...).

However;
What is obviously evident though is while Samsung is the first manufacturer of 3D NAND, that doesn't mean they are superior, at the start or even today, against the 'aging' products from their competitors. Being first (by itself) is not a sign of being best. And in tech, it usually means being worst (in a very short time after intro...). In Samsung's case, it was (and still is) worse even when they had no competitors for years after they initially started using TLC nand...

TLC NAND and it's limitations are a showstopper for sustained and/or 'heavy' workflows... when pseudo-SLC cache is taken out of the equation (and the subsequent drop (depending on the specific model we're talking about) to at or below HDD levels of 'performance' that can be sustained); even 3D TLC NAND cannot compete with regards to sustained storage subsystem PERFORMANCE. Nor can it compete in longest battery life either (requires longer and higher voltages/currents for erase/program cycles). Even today, for price, it falls far short of what it promised so many years ago.

And to make a blunt point; endurance doesn't even enter the picture here (nobody cares about it anymore). (Especially with 33% or more OP'ing as I do by default to any SSD I put into mine (or my clients) production systems).


What should be obvious to everyone that follows SSD's (and storage subsystem's in general...) is that even PCIe x4 M.2 SSD's don't give performance benefits in any 'real world use' that is of interest to most here.

See:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10328/the-toshiba-ocz-rd400-pcie-ssd-review/10

See:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ocz-rd400-nvme-ssd,4578-5.html

See:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ocz-trion-150-ssd,4469-5.html

See:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/how-we-test-storage,4058.html#p9

Compare the top/first 'real world software' graphs in the two links above for an 'excellent' M.2 PCI3 x4 drive to an entry level TLC SATAIII drive. Differences in service times are nowhere near the differences that the price between these options might suggest and also nowhere near the differences the synthetic 'scores' would suggest either.

The only logical conclusion? Storage subsystem performance has been stagnate for over half a decade yet, regardless of new '3D NAND' availability from any manufacturer.

But; particularly Samsung. Who loves to tweak their firmware for great synthetic 'scores' but can't come through with actual, real world better results (with almost any/all of their products, imo).


So then, what is the next step after this stagnation in productivity from our storage subsystems?

It isn't (just) 3D NAND (and certainly not the TLC variety). It isn't M.2 (PCIe x2, x4 or x8). And doing RAID0 arrays of any combination of these isn't going to move them into the 'next' step either...

Of all the information we have today; 3D XPoint or one of it's competitors will be the next real 'thing' in storage subsystems.

See:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ibm-pcm-tlc-3d-xpoint,31811.html


Thinking that what we are using today is the next big thing in storage is wishful thinking. Or a blind love for Samsung. Or both.


The best anyone can do today is buy the biggest capacity MLC SSD they can afford, OP by 33% or more, and use them until 3D XPoint or a derivative is finally here. And by that point? Win10x64Pro will have the smarts to deal with those future storage/memory subsystems and hopefully show us actual real world improvements by moving to the new tech then. And not merely achieving synthetic 'scores' that Samsung especially, is so good at making their products show.

 

Sorry, double post...

 

@tilleroftheearth still, there are some current MLC drives hard to pass by. E.g. Sandisk enterprise drives for less than $200. Also, Chinese MLC offerings based on reference designs are interesting, especially given the price - but these guys ain't eager to send review samples to anyone, destroying my enthusiasm.

 

Yeah, that was the point of my post.

Certain MLC drives will always be worth buying... until the real successors to them show up here in earth orbit.

 

Like M600 1TB...good luck finding a reasonably priced one though.

 

Probably easier to get a 960GB Sandisk Extreme SSD lol..