Manufacturers are Struggling to Improve QLC NAND Yields

[AlphaAtlas]

Mirroring a report from Tweaktown last month, a Digitimes source claims that chip-makers are struggling to get QLC NAND yields "to over 50%". Fortunately, manufacturers seem to have ironed out the issues associated with 3D TLC. The same source predicted that flash oversupply issues will continue into 2019, meaning SSD prices could remain low in spite of the manufacturing woes.

NAND flash prices for the first half of 2019 will be hit by continued oversupply, plus more substandard chips, the sources said. Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Toshiba/ Western Digital and Micron Technology/Intel have all introduced their 3D QLC NAND technologies. Among them, Micron announced it had commenced shipments of QLC NAND products for enterprise applications including cloud computing, AI and big data servers.

 

[BloodyIron]

I'm loving how affordable SSD storage is now. You can get 500GB for under $100USD! That's awesome!

 

[Kdawg]

is QLC some shitty flash with low write cycles?

 

[Dermen]

is QLC some shitty flash with low write cycles?

SLC - single
MLC - double
TLC - triple
QLC - quadruple

It is just a progression of holding more info per cell, which also ends up with lower write cycles. When MLC came out everybody said it was no good, then everybody used it. Same with TLC. I assume QLC will be the same, everybody will complain about how it is worse but when it ends up getting really cheap everybody will use it and it will work fine for 95% of users. The other 5% are using it for things it isn't designed for but are too cheap to pay for the enterprise drives that were.