20nm NAND—Smaller and Better

Today, Intel and Micron announced our latest advancement of NAND process technology—20nm NAND. Our new device crams 8GB into about 40% less die area than our already-tiny 25nm NAND. That’s small enough to make it the first 8GB MLC die that can fit into a microSD® card. You can see the difference in the photo below. This shrink is well ahead of our competitors (some have just announced production on a process equivalent to our 25nm) and keeps us solidly in the leadership position for NAND development. But the really remarkable thing is what we’ve been able do for quality and endurance. To understand why this is significant, you need to know a little about NAND scaling.

Process shrinks require tinier, more-complex cells, which translates to lower performance and endurance. This has been true for generations of NAND process shrinks and is more or less a byproduct of the laws of physics. We’re approaching atomic dimensions (a single copper atom is .25nm), and it takes some extraordinary science to design circuits that can hold electrical charges at this scale.

With this new design however, we included some innovative new technology that will allow our 20nm NAND to eventually hit the same endurance and performance specifications as our current-generation NAND (25nm). We’re also continuing our pattern of keeping ECC (error correction code) requirements a generation lower than the competition. Our 20nm NAND will have similar ECC requirements to some competitors’ current NAND products, meaning they won’t require more ECC from the controller.

These are significant advancements that helps provide a viable path for NAND scaling and development. The end result is a great new product that’s going to enable even more innovation in mobile storage applications.

For Anyone Who’s Ever Tried to Compare SSDs…

Micron’s Senior Applications Engineer, Doug Rollins, is participating in Storage Switzerland’s “How to Compare SSDs” webinar this Wednesday, March 30.

Doug will talk about the importance of establishing “specsmanship”—or industry-standard terms and tests—for SSDs. Listen in as he debunks SSD myths, defines important SSD terms, and highlights standardized testing methodologies that work.

Register today to attend the Webinar on Wednesday, March 30 at 11:00 a.m. EST.

C400 SSD Benchmark Results—Yeah, It’s Fast

Several of you have been asking to see additional benchmark results from the C400. Micron’s product engineering teams tailor their performance testing suites to OEM requirements, which focus on IOMeter and PCMark® Vantage data.

But we know most of you are interested in seeing a wide variety of tests. Our Crucial team runs many of the tests popular with reviewers, and I’ve included screen shots from AS SSD, ATTO, and CrystalDiskMark for the Crucial m4 SSD (the consumer version of the C400 OEM drive). Enjoy. You can see why we believe the C400 and m4 will be one of the most compelling client SSD designs of the year; great performance, leading 25nm NAND, and Micron’s thorough quality and reliability testing. More in-depth performance tests will be available from all your favorite reviewers in a couple weeks.

AS SSD

ATTO

CrystalDiskMark

How to Build a Solid 25nm SSD (and how not to)

Some of the early attempts at 25nm NAND SSDs have created some negative perceptions about the quality the NAND itself, which is really misplaced. It is possible to build great SSDs with 25nm NAND; but you do have to be deliberate about your process and objectives (it also helps to have inside knowledge about how that NAND works). I want to use today’s blog to lay out some of the key principles that guided the development of the RealSSD™ C400—our own 25nm SSD (the retail version will be branded as the Crucial M4 SSD):

Label Capacity Must Equal User Capacity
There’s nothing wrong with over-provisioning (reserving some of the NAND capacity for better performance and durability), but the drive label must state the capacity the user has access to. This is basic marketing honesty. The entire hard-drive industry got sued for this years ago and established standards for user capacity as a result. Micron follows these standards—we always market our drives at the true user capacity. In the case of the C300 and C400, the user capacities are identical—64, 128, and 256 GB (the C400 also offers a 512 GB).

Performance Must Not Degrade
We’ve taken a long-term view of the market; each new generation of drives must haveequal or better performance than the last. New NAND designs do present challenges, but because Micron leads NAND development, our SSD team has early insight into new products, and we start work early to make sure our SSDs make the best use of that NAND. The C400 is proof of that. As shown in the chart, it’s noticeably faster than the C300.

Keep Endurance High
SSD Enthusiasts are aware that new NAND designs start out at lower endurance cycle counts than the previous generation, and are sometimes wary of next-generation SSDs as a result. But cycle counts don’t necessarily translate 1:1 to drive endurance specs—good NAND management (via the firmware and controller) is the key.

We specify SSD endurance in total bytes written (TBW). The 25nm C400 offers the same endurance as the C300 for the 128, 256 and 512 GB models—72 TB TBW. This is equivalent to 40GB per day every day for 5 years, and far exceeds the patterns of any PC user. The 64 GB drive endurance is rated at 36 TB TBW—that’s 20 GB per day over the same time period, which still exceeds typical consumer use patterns.

We take the reliability of the C400 very seriously and have gone to great lengths to develop advanced firmware algorithms that manage the NAND. Again, being NAND developers gives us the unique ability to design end-to-end SSD quality as a complete system, alongside our NAND design team.

I hope you don’t let these early attempts at 25nm SSDs dampen your enthusiasm about this new technology. The SSD market is going to change dramatically in the next few years, and leading-edge NAND (and SSDs from the companies that make that NAND) is what will make it possible. Crucial’s M4 SSD will hit the shelves in mid-March. There’s a lot to be excited about; you’ll see proof in the C400/M4 reviews in a just a few weeks.

C400 Delivers Remarkable Performance

It’s true, the RealSSD™ C400 delivers some pretty impressive performance (415 MB/s reads and 260 MB/s writes). But all those IOPs and sequential performance specs are over the head of most consumers. To speak to them, we set up this simple demo of a C400 and stock hard drive running the same programs in identical laptops.

Of course the demo itself isn’t a novel concept by any means, but we think you’ll agree that results are staggering.

Tech Talk: RealSSD™ C400 and the 2011 SSD Market

Dean Klein, Micron’s Vice President of Memory System Development, discusses the new RealSSD C400 drive and how SSDs will grow in 2011 with the influx of ultra-mobile notebooks. Dean also discusses how the leading-edge performance and capacities of the C400 are poised to serve this market.

RLDRAM® Memory Fuels Next-Gen Networking

Micron has a long history of providing networking customers with outstanding technical expertise, dedicated customer support, and some of the best low-latency memory solutions available. I’m proud that it has led to a technical collaboration with TPACK, now a subsidiary of AppliedMicro, that pairs our low-latency RLDRAM memory with their next-generation TPX5000 100G packet processor to create a highly customizable platform that maximizes networking system performance.

TPACK A/S chose our RLDRAM 2 memory for their new Ardbeg reference design for high-speed 100 Gb/s optical transport systems. It’s a high-performance design meant to help networking equipment meet the ever-increasing demand for bandwidth. TPACK has selected Micron’s RLDRAM 2 as it represents a cost-efficient, high-performing, and well supported memory solution for networking applications.

To match the requirements of the networking segment, Micron is committed to providing customers with supply stability and continuity of support. As a matter of fact, our popular RLDRAM 2 product line was recently migrated to a more advanced 50nm process technology and the Ardbeg platform makes good use of the new design. Moving to 50nm provides enhanced benefits, including improved system performance and lower power consumption. It also allowed us to move production of these parts to our most advanced fabs, which will help us maintain a much longer roadmap for RLDRAM 2 memory, enabling us to provide these parts for years to come.

The TPX5000 processor (the newest in TPACK’s line of TPX packet-transport switches) delivers a full 100 Gb/s line rate and is targeted at transport network applications. It provides extensive support of Ethernet and MPLS-TP protocols with HW-based SONET-style OAM and 50ms protection for thousands of individual packet flows. The addition of Micron’s RLDRAM 2 facilitates lookup in large Ethernet and MPLS-TP address tables at the 100 Gb/s line rate.

While we expect RLDRAM 2 be used in applications like this for years to come, we recently also announced our third-generation RLDRAM 3 memory that pushes performance even further with higher densities and lower latency. To learn more about our newest RLDRAM products, visit our Web site.

ClearNAND™ Flash–Another Reason NAND is the Best Nonvolatile Memory Available

It’s a new NAND technology that’s going to enable new applications and continued NAND scaling. The difference is in the way it handles ECC. Get the details about what it is, how it works, and why it’s advantageous in this whiteboard overview.

Trends in Flash Memory–The Future is Clear

We recently sat down with Glen Hawk, our VP of NAND Solutions, to talk about the company’s direction and vision for NAND Flash memory. It’s a candid look at the challenges that NAND technology presents and our response in terms of developing NAND solutions that can go the distance and continue to provide advantages and create exciting possibilities well into the future.

The RealSSD™ C300 Ranked #16 on PCWorld’s 100 Best Tech Products of 2010

PCWorld recently published its list of top technology products of 2010, and coming in at No. 16 out of the 100 best in the world is the RealSSD C300 solid-state drive. In a year that has seen a fair share of breakthrough technologies – Apple’s iPad and iPhone 4, the latest version of the Amazon Kindle, and Google’s Android 2.2 smartphone operating system, just to name a few – earning a spot in the top 20 is a notable achievement. And in the Best of 2010 subcategory of “Storage and Useful Gadgets,” the C300 came in at the very top of the list.

In its description of the product, PCWorld noted that the C300 “is the first SSD we’ve tested to support 6-gigabits-per-second SATA, which enables faster write speeds because it can push more data through the pipe” and that it “delivered top-flight overall performance and the best write performance.”

PCWorld’s editorial staff evaluates hundreds of tech products throughout the year, spanning the full range of offerings from smartphones and PCs to software and storage and beyond. Only the best of the best make it onto the prestigious top 100 list each year, underscoring the truly standout capabilities of the RealSSD C300.

Some of the other products joining the C300 in the top 20 include Samsung’s Galaxy Tab PC (#5) and Epic 4G smartphone (#8), Google’s Chrome Web browser (#14) and Microsoft Office 2010 (#19). Make sure to read the full article for a complete list of PCWorld’s 100 Best Tech Products of 2010.