http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/ Engadget Comments for Hynix develops triple-level-cell NAND flash: 30 percent cheaper than MLC http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2009 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/
The "netbook" market is quickly being saturated and their small size means that regular hard drives are out of the picture. Now the SSD market is quickly being saturated to meet the demand of the netbooks - which allows for more R&D on SSD drives.

More competition will lead to lower prices and better/more reliable technology.

I forsee a 100 GB SSD around $99.99 within a year.]]>Jun 4th 2008 10:38AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/Jun 4th 2008 11:25AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/Jun 4th 2008 11:52AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/Jun 4th 2008 10:15PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/Jun 4th 2008 10:57AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/Jun 4th 2008 11:14AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/There is no way that is true. Apple may be the market share leader in portable MP3 players and many of those use solid state memory but there is _no way_ they are the biggest user.

Cell phones use it. GPS devices. Computers in cars (not some dashboard kind either but the important ones under the hood). Motherboards. ATMs. I could go on for hours.

Many companies in the sectors I named sell more chips than Apple could hope for. Hell RIM is kicking ass in the cell phone market and their phones have the same kind of memory.]]>Jun 4th 2008 12:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/If they continue that MLC trend there it will not help much since it will only be useful for devices were speed and reliability don't matter - probably not SSDs. So I'm very curious to hear more]]>Jun 4th 2008 2:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/Jun 4th 2008 8:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/Jun 5th 2008 7:47AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/
And why stop at three layers? Are we going to see 4, 8, or eventually 16 layer chips?]]>Jun 4th 2008 11:32AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/
While I am not an expert on NAND memory, this is the problem as I understand it. SLC cells only have two levels, 0 & 1. They are fast and easy to measure, as you just have to measure a 0 or a 1 when you read. Thus cells can be made small and the charge can be extracted rapidly as there is little charge in each cell.

MLC cells are typically 2-bit cells (thus have 4 possible states). This means they have to be bigger as they must hold more charge so that you can distinguish the 4 states in which they can exist which also makes them slower. Nonetheless, a 2-bit MLC cell is smaller than two SLC cells, thus they cost less to produce as each "bit" essentially is smaller than an SLC equivalent.

TLC would essentially extend the MLC concept to 3 bits, and thus now each cell can exist in one of 8 states. Presumably these 3-bit TLC cells are approximately 30% smaller than two 2-bit MLC cells making them again, cheaper to produce.]]>Jun 4th 2008 11:48AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/hynix-develops-triple-level-cell-nand-flash-30-percent-cheaper/
The level of growth in this field is exciting. I'm looking forward to getting where this is going.]]>Jun 4th 2008 11:58AM