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OCZ to launch TLC NAND based SSDs next year
If you still think SSDs are too expensive, then OCZ might have a solution for you come early next year, as the company is planning to offer SSDs with TLC (three bits per cell) NAND flash. This means that less flash memory is needed to make an SSD of the same capacity as when MLC NAND flash is being used, much in the same way as MLC is cheaper than SLC. The company also has some new Indilinx SSD controllers coming which will further help keeping costs down.
If you still think SSDs are too expensive, then OCZ might have a solution for you come early next year, as the company is planning to offer SSDs with TLC (three bits per cell) NAND flash. This means that less flash memory is needed to make an SSD of the same capacity as when MLC NAND flash is being used, much in the same way as MLC is cheaper than SLC. The company also has some new Indilinx SSD controllers coming which will further help keeping costs down.
If the upside of using TLC NAND flash in an SSD is lower cost, the downside is reliability, as for one, TLC NAND flash has so far only been used in various memory cards and possibly a few USB flash drives, but not in a single SSD to date. On top of that, writing more data per cell means that each cell will wear out quicker. However, OCZ seems to argue that it's not an issue in consumer applications, as the company is expecting the TLC NAND flash life to be at least four years and by then most consumers have upgraded their computer already.
In addition to that, OCZ is planning to introduce new Indilinx SSD controllers, of which the second generation that should arrive towards the end of next year will feature nDurance 2 technology which the company claims will further increase the life of NAND flash by up to two times. However, the first generation of Indilinx controllers that will support TLC will only feature first generation nDurance technology and will as such not offer the extra life span for NAND flash.
The company is also planning some new high-performance SSD controllers for both SATA and PCI Express interfaces which are said to hit 100,000 IOPS for the enterprise market and 70,000 IOPS for the consumer market. Other new additions are NVM Express based SSDs, where NVM Express is a new PCI Express based SSD solution for the enterprise market. Judging by OCZ's future plans, it looks like 2012 will be an interesting year for SSDs and we very much doubt that OCZ's competitors are sitting back and let OCZ be the only company hitting these new market segments.
Source: Storagereview
