FLASH! Aaa-aaah. 3D NAND will save every one of us

We have 3D NAND flash chip supplier timing, courtesy of financial analyst whiz Aaron Rakers. The four foundry operators will all be pumping out mass production volumes of the high-capacity stuff in 18 months' time 3D NAND is a fresh way of getting out of the NAND scaling trap. The traditional way, of increasing NAND chip …

[Hasham]

19TB is a lot of porn

Why, what else do people store anymore?

[DropBear]

Re: 19TB is a lot of porn

I'm sure the "I can hear the difference between audio sampled at 1 MHz and 0.9 MHz on 2048 bits" crowd will rejoice...

[samlebon2306]

Re: 19TB is a lot of porn

4K porn for better close-ups.

[FartingHippo]

Re: 19TB is a lot of porn

Ick. I really don't want to see every pore and blemish. Soft focus exists for a reason, you know.

[Robin]

Re: 19TB is a lot of porn

640GB ought to be enough for anyone

[Ashton Black]

Re: 19TB is a lot of porn

It's a good quote, but ol' Bill denied ever saying it.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2534312/operating-systems/the--640k--quote-won-t-go-away----but-did-gates-really-say-it-.html

Have an up anyway!

[JEDIDIAH]

Re: 19TB is a lot of porn

Of course Bill would deny saying something like that. It makes him look like a real big idiot in hindsight. Although his products do that well enough anyways.

[davemcwish]

Re: 19TB is a lot of porn

Nope not nearly enough. Only get 500GB on my MacBook and as it's glued together I'm going to have to resort to a second external disk; first 2TB one is full. 640Gb would be ok if you don't do a lot, have a small media collection and don't want to keep any photos you've taken. And no, none is p0rn; being married with a child took care of that.

[spitfire31]

Re: 19TB is a lot of porn

Not if you're editing PRORES 4K footage, it's not. ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 19TB is a lot of porn

Cat pics.

[DiViDeD]

Re: 19TB is a lot of porn

Oh a lot better tha cat pics.

Cat videos

In 3D

With multiple camera angles

and alternative endings

and ATMOS soundtrack

and director's commentary on track 2

Finally the intertubes have a worthy purpose

[JEDIDIAH]

Re: 19TB is a lot of porn

Some people still like owning things. If you don't want to fiddle with lots of little bits of physical media all of the time, then a big hard drive is the obvious option. Not everyone trusts the cloud or even has a decent connection to it.

What do people store? Anything they still own.

Blurays are 35G a pop.

[theOtherJT]

I wonder what the performance impact of going 3D will be? I imagine it to be basically equivalent to just doubling (tripling, quadrupling... keep going until you get N layers) the number of 2D chips, and many chips managed in parallel could potentially _much_ faster, yes?

[Kevin McMurtrie]

I see a slightly more technical article at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/23/sandisk_takes_the_bics_route_to_3d/ but the operation is still a bit fuzzy. Is it turning each cell into a small vertical bucket brigade?

[elDog]

Please think about the poor backups...

Since ElReg required me to supply some body, any body:

Think about the poor cloud backups!

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Please think about the poor backups...

I thought about them. ADSL2+ can apparently manage about 1.4Mb/s upstream, so that's perhaps 160KB/s. That's about 5TB/year, unless I've dropped some factors of ten, and assuming that you don't use the internet connection for anything else between now and 2016.

[Long Haired Git]

Just wanted to tip my hat to the by-line.

I lol'd.

[e_is_real_i_isnt]

Half a century is a long time to be #1 in computing

First came magnetic core storage and rotating media was not impressed.

Then came Bubble memory and rotating media was not impressed.

Then came EEPROM and rotating media was not impressed.

Then came Static, battery backed RAM and rotating media was not impressed.

Then came Flash and rotating media was not impressed.

I wonder if rotating media will be impressed by this upstart or if they will do what they always do, and increase the density and decrease the price and continue to hold out against a total takeover by the those who would take the throne away.

I'm still waiting multiple heads per side to increase throughput, but maybe it's not time yet.

[Charles 9]

Re: Half a century is a long time to be #1 in computing

THIS time, though, spinning rust is itself up against the magnetic limit. 3D flash actually has a genuine physical advantage this time: it stacks MUCH better than spinning rust.

[Fluffy Bunny]

Multi-terrabyte flash storage would finally kill magnetic storage for short-term use. It would still be needed for archiving, though.

[brainburst]

More storage, faster storage where the hell is Reliable longterm storage?!?!!

It's freakin crazy. Data density and speed is continuing to increase but we are still stuck with tape for reliable backup?? WTF when is someone going to develop higher density ROM or limited write storage? It doesn't even have to write that fast. But we need it to last at least 25 years

[Charles 9]

Re: More storage, faster storage where the hell is Reliable longterm storage?!?!!

It's your 25 years that's the problem. Technology is moving SO rapidly that the means to retrieve that 25-year-old data may disappear well before then. Consider this. 20 years ago the 1.4MM floppy was standard issue. Now you know any computers that pack one? Same with Travan tape drives.

IOW, trying to actually keep a storage medium viable for a quarter century is a crap shoot. So the general recommendation is to rotate the backups every few years as technology advances. As of right now, tape has the edge when it comes to cold storage, with spinning rust edging out current flash technology and optical discs for second (leaving it the most viable option for consumer backups at this time).

If you find an inexpensive means to store data by the terabyte and can survive, say, five years in storage, I'd love to hear about it.

[JEDIDIAH]

Re: More storage, faster storage where the hell is Reliable longterm storage?!?!!

20 years? I already have 20 year old data that has survived the test of time by being always online.

Things don't need to be stuffed on a shelf somewhere. Tech has moved beyond that already. It's an irrelevant, unnecessary, and bogus limiting requirement.

Plus offline media still degrades. You can drone on about what are essentially just averages but you will never know if your stuff is safe unless you actually check it. You may be unlucky. At least online copies of your data can be checked for bit rot.

1TB thumb drives will be cheap and widely usable before any tape technology is.

[Charles 9]

Re: More storage, faster storage where the hell is Reliable longterm storage?!?!!

"20 years? I already have 20 year old data that has survived the test of time by being always online."

How can you be SURE your online storage solution will remain viable 20 years down the road? Not just against an accident at the storage site but also a situation where the storage firm may no longer be in business?

That's one thing about local storage. At least you KNOW where to look to find the stuff, and if something starts happening you can take steps because you know where it located.

As for degredation, you take that into consideration with a planned level of redundancy as well as a rigorous rotation and inspection cycle to make sure your data stays fresh and to make any corrections should corruption be detected.

[Terafirma-NZ]

Correction the Samsung 3D NAND is actually cheaper to produce and is better in every way thats why Samsung decided to sell it at a higher price. Once Intel is in the market Samsung will then drop and can drop lower as they are already established while still making good profit in the early stages.

~No I don't work for them

[roger stillick]

Going 3d is a No Brainer...

Been Done b/4 this by Texas Instruments in the early 1970's SR-51A Super slide Rule Calculator, they piggy backed the memory chips to allow more memory than available chips would allow. this thing was the digital replacement for K&E's Log-Log Duplex Decitrig slide rule...Got mine on the advice of the father of one of my data entry clerks whose dad was an Ocean Pilot with a Master's license who used one of these Digital things to bring Navy ships back from Antarctica on summer provisioning runs back to Christ Church NZ. Both of us used slide rules for sight reduction, 3 digit S/R accuracy gives a multiple mile circle of uncertanty... the TI box made the vernier on the Sextant the limiting factor for area of uncertanty (less than 1/2 mile circle)... boxes like the TI was used until GPS boxes replaced everything (still have both my SR-51A and my Sextant)... the American Practical Navigator / Bowdich / HO-9 is long gone as it is now on line and a PDF (some things do change)...RS.