The different SSD modules. Image source: Micron.
Micron has announced the mass production of 232-layer QLC NAND flash memory and that it has started shipping it to enterprise customers and OEM PC manufacturers in its Micron 2500 NMVe SSD and its Crucial SSDs.
With the higher densities available to the new NAND, Micron claims a 50% improvement in speed over the previous 176-layer QLC NAND generation at 2400 MT/s (up from 1,600 MT/s), as well as 24% better read performance.
The new Micron 2500 Client SSD delivers superior PCMark 10 experience benchmark results, outperforming the average scores in the value SSD segment by close to 45%, the company said.
This comes somewhat on the heels of Micron’s shipping of its 232-layer TLC NAND, which the company manufactured from its Singapore fab.
The Micron 2500 SSD is available in 22 x 30mm, 22 x 42mm and 22 x 80mm form factors, in capacities from 512GB up to 2TB. These SSDs have a single-sided design, which Micron says provides greater flexibility for OEMs to integrate them into ultra-thin devices to workstations.
They are also robust with Micron claiming that the smallest capacity Micron 2500 512GB SSD has enough endurance to support thirteen 4K movie downloads per day, every day for three years.
Prasad Alluri, Vice President and General Manager of Micron's Client Storage Group said that the company anticipated that the 2500 SSD would accelerate QLC adoption in PCs as it delivered both the user experience and value.
We also heard this from Naga Chandrasekaran, Senior Vice President, Technology Development at Micron, who told us during an interview that Micron would be demonstrating several uses where QLC offers strong value but at quite competitive performance relative to other technologies like TLC.
Micron’s internal testing certainly seems to bear this out where the Micron 2500 SSD outperformed competing TLC-based NAND and QLC-based NAND SSDs.
Micron 2500 SSD performance | ||
Performance Metric | Versus TLC Client SSDs | Versus QLC Client SSDs |
Sequential read | Up to 48% better | Up to 72% better |
Sequential write | Up to 32% better | Up to 97% better |
Random read | Up to 38% better | Up to 131% better |
Random write | Up to 25% better | Up to 85% better |
Hopefully, the announcements of these new drives will help slow down the gradually rising prices of SSDs. If you haven't noticed, the prices of SSDs and HDDs have been rising because of the increase in demand for storage from companies working with AI.
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