Micron Technology has announced, or rather teased, that its Triple-Level Cell (TLC) NAND flash made with the 16nm manufacturing process should be ready this year while cheaper SSDs based on that same TLC NAND flash could come next year.


Currently most consumer based SSDs are based on Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND while TLC NAND is currently mostly used for memory cards, audio players, USB driver and similar devices and while MLC is generally more durable and reliable than TLC NAND, with 3000-10000 erase/write cycles as opposed to 1000 on the TLC-based NAND, Micros has been working hard in making it a much more reliable and durable.

During a conference call with investors and financial analysts, Mark Adams, President of Micron, said that "Our 16nm NAND yields have been very positive and position us well from a cost perspective. We are currently planning to ship 16nm TLC [NAND flash] in calendar Q4 in order to better position our portfolio from a cost perspective in the retail and consumer segments".

While Micron did not promise that we will see any SSDs based on TLC NAND flash memory anytime soon, it is still a good thing that we will see the chips this year as it might speed up the process in getting those SSDs on the market as soon as possible. Toshiba and SanDisk have already announced that they will both offer TLC-based SSDs by the end of this year.



Source: via KitGuru.net.