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