QLC SSDs Headed to Desktop PCs This Year

Megalith

Megalith

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Both Intel and flash partners Toshiba/Western Digital released QLC announcements this week, with the former producing its first QLC SSD for the data center and the latter discussing their 96-layer BICS4 3D QLC NAND chip, which can store up to 1.33 Tb of raw data (166 GB). In contrast to TLC flash, QLC will be cheaper and offer higher capacities, but lower endurance and performance.

SSDs come with up to 16 die per package, so that means Toshiba and WD will soon be able to pack in a whopping 2.66TB of storage into a single NAND package. The duo plans to begin sampling the BiCS4 QLC NAND in September and mass production is slated for early 2019. More importantly, WD's release clearly states that QLC SSDs will come to the consumer market under the SanDisk brand name. We expect Toshiba to follow suit with its own consumer SSDs.
 
It's great, if the price is right and they continue to develop their TLC/MLC portfolio. But consumer ignorance and the drive to be the price-point leader makes me worried.
 
Riccochet said:
Then why would enterprise want it? Endurance and Performance are king in the enterprise world. No way in hell I'd get something that's cheaper, slower and more likely to fail for any production environment.
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Because they're not replacing TLC SSD's with QLC, they'd replace HDDs in WORM applications, in which case every single factor other than cost is in the SSD's favor, but the TCO will be less for several reasons and initial cost will be reduced by 50% once 96L QLC hits.
 
MickeyBailey said:
Because they're not replacing TLC SSD's with QLC, they'd replace HDDs in WORM applications, in which case every single factor other than cost is in the SSD's favor, but the TCO will be less for several reasons and initial cost will be reduced by 50% once 96L QLC hits.
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Most consumer usage falls into the 'write-once-read-many(times)' category; assuming that controllers stay on top of wear leveling, these will make great replacements for many applications.

I'd told myself I wouldn't buy any more spinners, and I just picked up a pair of Seagate Ironwolfs because mass SSD storage just isn't there.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
Most consumer usage falls into the 'write-once-read-many(times)' category; assuming that controllers stay on top of wear leveling, these will make great replacements for many applications.

I'd told myself I wouldn't buy any more spinners, and I just picked up a pair of Seagate Ironwolfs because mass SSD storage just isn't there.
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I made a prediction several months ago - the consumer storage device of the future will be 3DXP/QLC NAND hybrid devices.
 
Sounds like I should run right out and buy one and then throw it in the trash.
Then I can go buy a high performance reliable one.

WTF are they thinking with this? :rolleyes:


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Spartacus said:
Sounds like I should run right out and buy one and then throw it in the trash.
Then I can go buy a high performance reliable one.

WTF are they thinking with this? :rolleyes:


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"SSD's are too expensive"

ok, we'll cut cost by creating QLC but performance might suffer somewhat and endurance is less but it's still orders of magnitude above HDD's

"why would they reduce performance and endurance? what were they thinking?"
 
SSDs are not too expensive, people are too cheap.

I suppose these crap drives may have their use in those low end crap laptops.

Strange way of thinking to me though..... go backwards and produce crap technology just to be a little cheaper. :rolleyes:

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Spartacus said:
SSDs are not too expensive, people are too cheap.

I suppose these crap drives may have their use in those low end crap laptops.

Strange way of thinking to me though..... go backwards and produce crap technology just to be a little cheaper. :rolleyes:

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for a small 250-500GB SSDs are not to bad but if you need 2-12TB of space that cost you some money if you try to do it on a SSD (somthing like $0.03/GB HDD, $0.20/GB SATA SSD or $0.39/GB for NVME)
 
Spartacus said:
SSDs are not too expensive, people are too cheap.

I suppose these crap drives may have their use in those low end crap laptops.

Strange way of thinking to me though..... go backwards and produce crap technology just to be a little cheaper. :rolleyes:

.
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What? How much does an 8 TB SSD cost? An 8 TB HDD is $150. Am I cheap because I don't want to spend tens or hundreds of thousands when I could spend a few grand to serve up my movies, music and documents? No, I'm not cheap. I'm also not stupid with my money. Even if I shat golden eggs and Tiffany cufflinks I wouldn't keep my files on SSDs at this point in time.
 
likeman said:
for a small 250-500GB SSDs are not to bad but if you need 2-12TB of space that cost you some money if you try to do it on a SSD (somthing like $0.03/GB HDD, $0.20/GB SATA SSD or $0.39/GB for NVME)
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S-F said:
What? How much does an 8 TB SSD cost? An 8 TB HDD is $150. Am I cheap because I don't want to spend tens or hundreds of thousands when I could spend a few grand to serve up my movies, music and documents? No, I'm not cheap. I'm also not stupid with my money. Even if I shat golden eggs and Tiffany cufflinks I wouldn't keep my files on SSDs at this point in time.
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Guys..... the title of this thread is talking about SSDs for desktops.
How are we all the sudden talking about expensive 8TB & 12TB SSD drives?

Yeah..... no shit 8TB SSDs are expensive. Duh.

Hard drives used to be $1/MB too..... $200 for a 200MB drive. (yes, megabytes)
I did not want a cheap slow shitty drive that would fail faster then either.


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Spartacus said:
SSDs are not too expensive, people are too cheap.

I suppose these crap drives may have their use in those low end crap laptops.

Strange way of thinking to me though..... go backwards and produce crap technology just to be a little cheaper. :rolleyes:

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You must have a chassis full of Optane drives, then. I don't agree with your definition of "crap".

The manufacturers are looking for ways to sell more NAND and that means targeting the traditional HDD market and that means creating cheaper products. If you don't want to buy the drives that doesn't mean there isn't a massive market for the QLC devices.

Spartacus said:
Guys..... the title of this thread is talking about SSDs for desktops.
How are we all the sudden talking about expensive 8TB & 12TB SSD drives?

Yeah..... no shit 8TB SSDs are expensive. Duh.

Hard drives used to be $1/MB too..... $200 for a 200MB drive. (yes, megabytes)
I did not want a cheap slow shitty drive that would fail faster then either.


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In what reality does any SSD fail faster than a spinner on average? Look at the workload ratings for modern HDD's, they're garbage compared to SSD's.
 
Actually ok with having something like this in my Long Storage server. I write it once and it can sit for years before it really gets used. If you are using it for your main drive, maybe this isn't for you.
 
RussianJ said:
Actually ok with having something like this in my Long Storage server. I write it once and it can sit for years before it really gets used. If you are using it for your main drive, maybe this isn't for you.
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Record some metrics on your "main drive" to see what your actual writes are over time. Unless you're doing video editing or constantly installing/reinstalling games/large programs, it really won't be very much.
 
MickeyBailey said:
You must have a chassis full of Optane drives, then. I don't agree with your definition of "crap".

The manufacturers are looking for ways to sell more NAND and that means targeting the traditional HDD market and that means creating cheaper products. If you don't want to buy the drives that doesn't mean there isn't a massive market for the QLC devices.


In what reality does any SSD fail faster than a spinner on average? Look at the workload ratings for modern HDD's, they're garbage compared to SSD's.
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SSD drives fail plenty.... have a look at Newegg buyer reviews with many SSD drives failing within 90 days.
Many of them are less expensive off brand drives.

But that's ok right?

As long as they are cheaper, everybody is good with lower performance and higher failure rates?

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Spartacus said:
SSD drives fail plenty.... have a look at Newegg buyer reviews with many SSD drives failing within 90 days.
Many of them are less expensive off brand drives.

But that's ok right?

As long as they are cheaper, everybody is good with lower performance and higher failure rates?

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Where are you getting "higher failure rates" from? Point me to where anyone has claimed QLC will have higher failure rates than TLC?

So cheap drive assemblers fail? What a shock, but how much of that has to do with the underlying memory vs. crappy production? Do you have any evidence to backup your claims or just "Newegg anecdotes" of cheap drives?
 
Armenius said:
Because consumer 850 Pro is enough for me and I don't have any extra PCI-E lanes.
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OK so let me point out the cognitive dissonance here...

You (and others in this thread) don't want cheap, slower performing QLC drives and have a hard time understanding why they would exist, but then use a cheaper, slower performing (and more prone to failure if considering endurance) drive compared to Optane drives because it's "enough for [you]".

Can we now all agree that users have different needs and for a significant part of the population cheaper is more important than higher performing? QLC drives will be a monster hit, just you watch. 3DXP/QLC hybrid drives are the future of consumer devices.
 
MickeyBailey said:
Where are you getting "higher failure rates" from? Point me to where anyone has claimed QLC will have higher failure rates than TLC?

So cheap drive assemblers fail? What a shock, but how much of that has to do with the underlying memory vs. crappy production? Do you have any evidence to backup your claims or just "Newegg anecdotes" of cheap drives?
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>>Do you have any evidence to backup your claims....

And what about you? Do you have any evidence to backup your claims?

Lower endurance translates to higher failure rates in my book.
You clearly just want to argue.

I'm done with this.


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Spartacus said:
Lower endurance translates to higher failure rates in my book.
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This is basically true, but 'failure rates' in this case just means work for the wear-leveling algorithm.

All flash is designed to degrade over time; this stuff will just degrade quicker than, if all things were equal, to TLC, which degrades quicker than MLC, which degrades quicker than SLC...

...and they all degrade.

What we've also seen is that TLC is actually pretty reliable in real-world use, even when hammered, and that leads to the conclusions that QLC might be pretty reliable when not being hammered.

And 'not being hammered' could be just about any consumer application as well as just about any mass raw data storage, so this really is a nice development both from the consumer side and for many enterprise applications.

Honestly I look forward to not buying any more spinners...
 
This sounds like perfect tech for my media storage. Even reduced durability will still leave it way ahead of the 3TB mechanical drives I'm using now in that regard, and it will use far less power to keep running 24/7. I'll take about 20TB worth.
 
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