Talking NAND Flash With Jim Handy – Part One

The following podcast was recorded with Jim Handy, from Objective Analysis on 12th December 2016.  The discussion is all about NAND Flash, what it is, where it came from and what we can expect in the future.  Martin and Chris talked to Jim for a little over an hour, so we’ve split the content into two parts.

You can reach Jim on Twitter at The SSD Guy, or via his blog(s) at http://thessdguy.com/ and http://thememoryguy.com/.

Feel free to provide feedback as comments on our blog or on our Linkedin group.  If you like this podcast, like us on iTunes!

• Elapsed Time:  00:35:14
• SFW: Yes

Timeline

• 00:00:00 – Intro
• 00:02:07 – Where did Flash Memory originate from? Floating gate memory, EPROM and EEPROM.
• 00:04:17 – 2004 – pricing for NAND fell below DRAM for the first time.
• 00:04:42 – NOR and NAND – differences and usage
• 00:06:05 – SLC, MLC and bits per cell
• 00:06:47 – SanDisk first to do multi-level cell with NOR flash. N-systems – 4 bits per cell
• 00:08:00 – Are we going to see QLC products?
• 00:08:12 – Moore’s Law for memory and processing – error correction techniques – Low Density Parity Checking
• 00:10:31 – Declining costs – consistent or in line with other media?
• 00:10:47 – The Scaling Limit in semiconductors – 15nm the best achieved with NAND today
• 00:11:42 – 3D-NAND – Toshiba invents in 2006-2007, understanding the layering mechanism
• 00:13:17 – GBBO gets a mention – 48 layer cakes
• 00:14:07 – The main players in the market, Samsung, Toshiba, SanDisk (Western Digital), SK Hynix, Micron and Intel
• 00:15:17 – The negatives of using NAND flash – management features – wear levelling, error correction.
• 00:17:07 – Over conservatism with the lifetime of drives, could we be more aggressive?
• 00:18:17 – SSD SMART feedback
• 00:19:17 – Micron drives – dynamic reconfiguring based on lifetime
• 00:20:17 – Over-provisioning – like old-skool tyre management!
• 00:22:47 – Form factors and media types other than NAND – Intel Braidwood, FusionIO on PCI, Diablo on memory bus
• 00:25:07 – Memory1 and the need for an interrupt on the storage bus
• 00:25:47 – Producing flash – fabs!
• 00:29:17 – Will China move into chip production?
• 00:30:17 – Plug compatible chips!
• 00:30:59 – Price parity of flash with hard drives?
• 00:31:47 – 30% – SSD and HDD capacity increases

Products/Vendors mentioned in this Podcast

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