16Tb ssd release date: 16TB M.2 NVMe SSDs won’t be coming any time soon — here’s why

16TB M.2 NVMe SSDs won’t be coming any time soon — here’s why

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(Image credit: Sabrent)

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Sabrent has confirmed it is set to launch its first 16TB SATA enterprise SSD (and probably the only 2.5-inch one) during the summer.

“Back [in December 2020] when this 16TB SSD was announced, shortly after, Phison found problems with the controller used and canceled the project,» a spokesperson told TechRadar Pro.

«The good news in the issues have been fixed and we expect to see engineering sample SSD’s very soon. So, in short, it will be produced soon, in the following months, if all goes well after testing the samples.”

The drive will likely use Micron’s 96-layer QLC packages with a Phison E12S controller. We don’t know what the price will be, but given you can pick up an 8TB SSD from as little as $749 (Samsung 870 QVO from Amazon ), we’d be unpleasantly surprised if Sabrent sells its 16TB mammoth drive for more than $1,500, below the $100/TB price point.

The target audience will be enterprises looking to replace old 2.5-inch hard disk drives that have hit a capacity ceiling. No new 5TB 2.5-inch laptop drives have been announced for the past few years; vendors like Seagate and WD have focused their efforts on 3.5-inch models, with 20TB models already available and 50TB ones in the pipeline.

An esteemed editor from our sister publication Anandtech wrote back in 2019 that no one wants over 16TB per SSD, but Sabrent is adamant that there would be a huge demand for one, probably boosted by post-Covid demand. And the firm already produces a portable SSD of that capacity that bundles two 8TB SSDs.

When will we see an M.2 class 16TB SSD, though? There are many obstacles, even if the technology exists.

Micron announced a 232-layer NAND chip earlier this year, with Chinese YTMC likely to follow suit later in 2022. That’s more than twice the capacity of the 96-layer NAND used by Sabrent in its Rocket Q SSD and should be enough for even 19. 2TB M2 SSD. And controllers shouldn’t be an issue, given there’s technically no hard upper limit to storage capacity.

The biggest problem remains power, both in terms of consumption and heat dissipation. Could the current M.2 spec provide enough power without the need for an external power source? The jury is still out.

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Sabrent is close to launching a massive capacity 16TB SSD for consumers

(Image credit: Sabrent)

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Larger capacity SSDs for the consumer market are coming, and not surprisingly, Sabrent is the driving force behind one of them—a 16TB model in the 2.5-inch form factor, with a SATA interface.

That essentially means the focus is more on capacity than it is speed. I suppose it’s just not feasible (yet) to cram 16TB of NAND flash memory onto an M.2 drive with an NVMe interface (as pictured above, because Sabrent does not yet offer any 2.5-inch models). Nevertheless, compared to a mechanical HDD, even SATA SSDs offer a tangible and noticeable performance boost, from faster boot up times to even just smoother navigation in Windows. It’s really a night and day difference going from an HDD to an SSD, SATA or otherwise.

Sabrent told our friends at TechRadar that it is currently testing engineering samples of both enterprise and client (read: home consumer) versions of the 16TB drive, and expects to have finalized products ready for purchase in the very near future.

I anticipate performance being roughly in line with most modern SATA SSDs. There is also a good chance the SSD will be built around Phison’s E12S controller, featuring four Micron 96-layer quad-level cell (QLC) NAND flash memory packages on both sides of the PCB.

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Phison demoed the controller in a prototype 16TB SSD at CES, as Tom’s Hardware wrote about in January. At the time, it cranked out sequential reads in the neighborhood of 550MB/s and sequential writes of around 530MB/s. As a point of reference, Crucial’s MX500 1TB (as found in our roundup of the best SSDs for gaming and a great option for a secondary SSD) is rated to deliver 560MB/s and 510MB/s of sequential read and write performance, respectively.

This will end up being another ‘first’ for Sabrent, after having been the first to launch a 4TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD and the first to launch an 8TB M.2 SSD . And for a brief time earlier this year, it also boasted having the fastest M.2 SSD around.

Along those lines, the 16TB model is undoubtedly going to end up being the most expensive consumer SSD. Pricing has not been announced, but expect it be around two grand.

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Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD»*»,8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).

from the first models of the 70s to the present day / Habr

In October 2016, we introduced two lines of 2. 5-inch solid state drives at once: WD Blue and Green SSD. In any other industry, such a move would seem risky enough, even for a corporation like Western Digital. Indeed, the promotion of a novelty in a niche where spheres of influence have long been defined, in most cases, turns into large financial costs and rarely leads to positive results. However, the SSD market has its own specifics, opening up the widest opportunities for competition, which is due to both technological features and a number of historical prerequisites. It is about the history of the emergence of solid state drives that we will talk today. nine0003

SSD pioneers — fast, expensive, not for everyone

Strictly speaking, SSDs were around long before the invention of flash memory. After all, what is, in fact, a Solid State Drive? This is an information storage device that does not contain any mechanical components. Thus, the creation of Dataram Corporation with the proud name Bulk Core, introduced in 1976, can be called the very first SSD in the world. The steel chassis, measuring 19 by 15.75 inches, contained 8 strips of volatile RAM-memory, each of which had a volume of 256 kilobytes. A device the size of a good UPS (and, thanks to the presence of backup batteries, the corresponding weight) cost 9 at the start700 USD. The devices were used in industry and high-tech industries, however, due to the high cost and unreliability (still the risk of data loss was extremely high), they did not become widespread.

Dataram Bulk Core — the very first SSD

Nevertheless, after only 6 years, Axlon made an attempt to conquer the consumer segment by entering the market with an external RAM Disk drive, designed specifically for the Apple II personal computers released in 1982. The novelty carried on board 320 kilobytes of RAM, had dimensions comparable to modern compact NAS and was equipped with rechargeable batteries that provide 3 hours of battery life in case of power outages. nine0003

The Axlon RAM Disk brochure encourages you to upgrade your Apple II

You can guess how popular this solution has become by looking at the prices: at the start of sales, the device cost $ 1,400, while the Apple II itself was modified from 4 kilobytes of RAM at that time would have cost you $1,298. Even though this PC also had 4 kilobytes of built-in permanent memory, the ability to connect a cassette recorder, and later 5.25-inch drives more than compensated for this shortcoming. At the same time, the exorbitant price tag and the risk of losing all information made RAM Disk unattractive for the end user, especially since most users simply did not need additional read / write speed. nine0003

The invention of flash memory — a new era in the development of SSD

All of the devices listed above were unprofitable due to their high cost, unreliable due to the need for a constant power source, and unnecessarily bulky due to design features. In other words, the solid state drives of the past were deprived of all the advantages of modern models, which explains their fiasco. To create a truly revolutionary solution, a fundamentally new technology was required, which appeared only in the mid-80s with the invention of flash memory. nine0003

Semiconductor memory devices existed before: the first EPROM was created by Dov Froman back in 1971, but such chips were not even suitable for the role of a removable drive. The thing is that the procedure for erasing information was carried out by direct irradiation of the transistor matrix with an ultraviolet mercury lamp, for which there was even a small quartz glass window in the case, located directly above the chip. More advanced EEPROMs were already electrically erasable ROMs, however, to realize this possibility, a second transistor had to be introduced into the standard cell, which controls the write and erase modes. Because of this, the wiring area of the matrix components (and hence the chip itself) increased noticeably, and as a result, the compactness of the devices had to be sacrificed. nine0003

Therefore, the main scientific research was carried out in the field of creating microcircuits with a denser placement of erasure circuits. And those were crowned with success in 1984, when Fujio Masuoka, who worked at Toshiba Corporation, presented a prototype of non-volatile flash memory at the international conference International Electron Devices Meeting, held within the walls of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Fujio Masuoka, inventor of flash memory

The name itself was coined by his colleague, Shoji Ariizumi, who compared the erasing process to a flash of lightning. Unlike EEPROM, flash memory was based on MOSFETs with an additional floating gate located between the p-layer and the control gate, which made it possible to create truly miniaturized chips. nine0003

The first commercial flash memory was Intel’s NOR (Not-Or) chips, launched in 1988. Matrices of this type were a two-dimensional array, in which each memory cell was located at the intersection of a row and a column (the corresponding conductors were connected to different gates of the transistor, and the source was connected to a common substrate). However, already in 1989, Toshiba introduced NAND flash memory. The array had a similar structure, but in each of its nodes, instead of one cell, there were now several consecutive ones. In addition, two MOS transistors were used in each line — a control transistor located between the bit line and a column of cells, and a ground transistor. nine0003

A higher packing density helped to increase the chip capacity, but at the same time, the read / write algorithm became more complicated, which affected the speed of information exchange. In this regard, the new architecture could not completely replace NOR, which was used in the creation of embedded ROMs, while NAND was used in the manufacture of portable drives (USB flash drives, SD cards). By the way, the production of the latter became possible only in 2000, when the cost of flash memory dropped sufficiently and such devices could pay off, and the first “swallow” was the DiskOnKey model from IBM, the volume of which was only 8 megabytes. Not much, but let’s not forget that a miniature device the size of a key fob successfully replaced eight 3.5-inch floppy disks. nine0003

IBM DiskOnKey Flash

Since the production of flash chips is a technologically complex and knowledge-intensive process, there are only a few companies specializing in their production, SanDisk is one of them. It has more than 200 patents to its credit, licensed to the use of such well-known players as Intel, Hitachi, Samsung and Sony. Among the main achievements of the enterprise, it is worth mentioning the introduction of the CompactFlash standard (1994), the development of the MultiMedia Card (1997), and the Secure Digital Memory Card (SD) format created with Toshiba in 2000. Not surprisingly, when Toshiba headed for the US market, it was SanDisk that was chosen as a strategic partner to establish the joint venture FlashVision LLC (begun in 2001) based on the production facilities of the «daughter» of the Japanese giant Dominion Semiconductor. In October 2015, SanDisk was acquired by Western Digital. By joining forces with one of the pioneers of flash technology and having access to all the key developments and innovations, today we have the opportunity to create truly modern, competitive and reliable consumer-grade solutions. nine0003

Flash SSD for everyone

However, back to the subject of discussion — SSD. The ancestor of modern flash-based solid state drives was released by Digipro back in 1988: it carried 16 megabytes on board and cost $ 5,000. A year later, M-Systems introduced the concept of a device that more or less resembles modern ones. It had a format of 3.5 inches and could hold from 16 to 896 megabytes of information. The serial model was released only in 1995 and was called FFD-350 (Fast Flash Disk). Due to the high price, reaching several tens of thousands of dollars, it has found application in such industries as the military-industrial complex and the aviation industry, the record holder in terms of speed and volume turned out to be unsuitable for retail. nine0003

Digipro Flashdisk — the first SSD based on NAND

Transcend IDE Flash Module released in 2003 can be called a pioneer in the consumer segment, connected via a 44-pin Parallel ATA interface and having a volume of 128 or 512 megabytes. The product was positioned as a fast and fault-tolerant drive for working in extreme conditions. The low-profile module towered over the connector by only 2 centimeters, thanks to which it could be connected directly, without using a cable. nine0003

Transcend IDE Flash Module Opens SSD Retail Market

And the first SATA SSD appeared just a year later: Adtron Corporation introduced a 2.5-inch Flashpack drive, but its market value, depending on modification, reached $11,200. Samsung managed to reverse the situation in terms of pricing policy, offering customers a device with the uncomplicated name Flash SSD with a capacity of 32 gigabytes “only” for $700! And even though it was still difficult to call it a truly massive one, enthusiasts who are ready to fork out for an increase in the performance of a top-end PC, this option came to their taste. nine0003

Adtron Flashpack — the prototype of modern SSDs

Reducing the cost and increasing the attractiveness of SSD for the average consumer has largely become possible due to the emergence of multi-bit memory cells. Initially, the architecture of flash matrices assumed the ability to write only one bit of information to each cell, that is, the floating gate could store only two charge levels (this type of memory was called SLC — Single-Level Cell). The next step was the creation of MLC (Multi-Level Cell), capable of storing 2 bits (four charge levels) per cell. Even more capacious and cheaper to manufacture turned out to be 8-level (3 bits) TLC (triple-level cell) flash memory, also called 3bit MLC — as of 2015, its cost has fallen to 40 cents per gigabyte. nine0003

Like NOR and NAND, each of these solutions has its own niche. After all, if SLC provides the maximum speed of access to stored information and is extremely fault-tolerant, then TLC is characterized by budget and higher storage density. In the minuses of the latter, you can write down a significantly smaller working resource. As a result, SLC has become widespread in the corporate segment, TLC has become an absolute monopoly in retail, and MLC-based products are primarily aimed at those who value reliability and at the same time want to get the most out of their car. nine0003

Further development of the SSD was already carried out by improving the interfaces of the microcircuits. At the time when the question of introducing common standards arose, a consortium of technology companies, which included Intel, Sony, SanDisk, Micron Technology, Numonyx, Phison Electronics Corporation, SK Hynix, Spansion and STMicroelectronics, developed the Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) specification, the first version which was introduced in the spring of 2006. The throughput of ONFI 1.0 was only 50 MB / s and was not able to unleash the full potential of even SATA II — only its 4th revision, released in 2014, was able to step over the bar set by SATA III, demonstrating a data transfer rate of 800 MB / with a noticeable performance boost. nine0003

Improving read/write and caching algorithms has also played an equally important role. For example, with WD Blue SSDs, we focused on improving performance by introducing nCache 2.0 technology, which uses a portion of available memory in SLC mode to force random reads in real-world workload scenarios.

WD Blue SSD 1TB — the flagship of the first generation of Western Digital SSDs

performance. By the way, the latter supports error correction based on LDPC codes, thanks to which the WD Blue SSD is able to boast a rewriting resource of up to 400 TBW, which is more than 50% higher than other solutions in this price category. Thus, by introducing the above innovations, we managed to create a truly competitive product based on TLC memory, which combines high speed and reliability at a relatively low price. nine0003

Although all of the above have improved the performance and fault tolerance of drives, the potential of two-dimensional NAND turned out to be limited. When the capabilities of the 15-nm process were almost exhausted, and further improvement of the software part ceased to provide any noticeable increase in key indicators, 3D NAND flash memory replaced planar microcircuits. Its architecture is characterized by a vertical layout: conductive and insulating layers are deposited onto the crystal layer by layer. In the resulting puff, channels are formed, on the walls of which the structures of insulators and floating gates are applied — as a result, we get columns of ring-shaped field-effect transistors. This approach makes it possible to significantly increase the density of chips, and hence increase the memory capacity. nine0003

3D NAND structure diagram

The invention itself cannot be called know-how — for example, Samsung has been producing 3D chips since 2013. But, as you know, history moves in a spiral: just as flash drives appeared a dozen years after the creation of NAND due to the high cost of the latter, the first 3D chips also turned out to be too expensive, and therefore unsuitable for the consumer market. That is why the main efforts of the Toshiba and SanDisk alliance, which was already a division of Western Digital at that time, were aimed at developing a fundamentally different approach that would optimize production by making chips more affordable. nine0003

Research was successful — the result of the painstaking work of engineers was the emergence of BiCS (Bit Cost Scalable) 3D NAND. Compared to Samsung’s solution, which supports only 48 layers in each chip, BiCS technology allows increasing the packing density by 1.4 times and increasing the number of layers to 64. The architecture has also undergone changes: linear lines have been replaced by U-shaped ones. Their main feature is that the source lines, together with the switching transistors, are located in the upper part of the crystal, which almost completely eliminates the occurrence of errors during read / write operations due to high-temperature exposure. nine0003

BiCS architecture

What does this mean in practice? Since BiCS 3D NAND is built using a 40nm process technology and there is no need for deep ultraviolet photolithography, there is no need to upgrade existing production facilities. Given the higher data storage density, the cost of production in comparison with planar microcircuits practically does not change, allowing you to create high-capacity drives. In addition, the new design improves the energy efficiency of the chips by 25% and increases their reliability by eliminating the possibility of thermal damage. nine0003

All of the above made possible the next generation of WD SSD Blue SSDs based on 64-layer chips. Compared to its predecessors, the drives are characterized by high performance (read speed reaches 560 MB / s, write speed — 540 MB / s), MTBF up to 1.75 million hours and rewriting resource up to 500 TBW. In other words, even with a load of up to 80 gigabytes per day, the drives will work properly for 7 years, which is an absolute record in the middle price category. In addition, thanks to the increase in recording density, the updated line has expanded with a two-terabyte flagship — an impressive volume and excellent characteristics make this model an ideal solution for professionals and enthusiasts. nine0003

Instead of a conclusion

Already now it can be argued that the reduction in the cost of 3D NAND will make its use ubiquitous. The further arms race will shift towards increasing the density of three-dimensional crystals and developing original architectural solutions, which will make it possible to create truly affordable and cost-effective products. It is quite possible that in segments such as the production of laptops, classic HDDs will be completely forced out of the market by solid state drives. The trend is already visible: according to forecasts by DRAMeXchange (a division of the TrendForce analytical agency), this year the share of laptops equipped exclusively with SSDs will exceed 56% of all devices sold, and in the future this figure will only increase. However, the prospects for the development of the industry are the topic of a separate material, which we will definitely prepare for Habr’s readers. Stay tuned for blog updates! nine0003

Author: Natalya Khludova

New information about Surface Pro 9 and Surface Laptop 5: processors and release date

Surface Laptop, Surface Pro 9, News

03.10.2022 Arina Leave a comment

WinFuture has shared details on the upcoming Surface Pro 9 and Surface Laptop 5, including processor and release dates.

The Surface Pro 9 and Surface Laptop 5 will ship with 12th Gen Intel processors, the source said; configurations will differ depending on whether the device is consumer or commercial. nine0003

	Surface Pro 9 (rumoured)
OS	Windows 11 Home, Windows 11 Pro (commercial)
Processor	Consumer: 12th Gen Intel Core i5-1245U, Core i7-1265U
	Commercial (vPro): 12th Gen Intel Core i5-1235U, Core i7-1255U
	5G configuration: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx G3 (Microsoft SQ3) ARM
RAM	8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB LPDDR4x (Wi-Fi)
	8 GB or 16 GB LPDDR4x (5G)
Video card	Intel Iris Xe, Ardreno (ARM)
Built-in memory	128GB 256GB SSD, 512GB 1TB SSD (Wi-Fi)
	128 GB, 256 GB SSD, 512 GB (5G)
Display	13″ 3:2 aspect ratio
	2880×1920 (267 PPI), up to 120Hz
Ports	Two Thunderbolt 4, Surface Connect, 3. 5mm
Sound	Dual 2W stereo speakers, Dolby Atmos, dual studio microphone
Communication	Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1, Snapdragon X20 LTE/5G eSIM
Camera	IR front camera 5 MP (1080p), rear 10 MP (1080p, 4K)
Keyboard	Surface Pro Signature (not included)
Touchpad	Precision
Stylus	Surface Slim Pen 2 (not included)
Battery	50.2 Wh Up to 16 hours
Size	(287 mm x 208.3 mm x 9.4 mm)
Weight	891 g
Color	Platinum, Graphite, Forest Green, Sapphire Blue (Wi-Fi)
	Platinum (5G)

WinFuture also confirmed that Surface Pro 9 is configured on ARM and supports 5G. Unfortunately, it will only be available in platinum. There are rumors that a red-orange coloring may also appear for the configuration with Intel.

	Surface Laptop 5 13″ (rumoured)	Surface Laptop 5 15″ (rumoured)
OS	Windows 11 Home, Windows 11 Pro (commercial)	Windows 11 Home, Windows 11 Pro (commercial)
Display	13.5″ 3:2 aspect ratio	15″ 3:2 aspect ratio
	2256×1504 (201 PPI) 120Hz PixelSense Flow	2496×1664 (201 PPI) 120Hz PixelSense Flow
Processor	Consumer: 12th Gen Intel Core i5-1245U, Core i7-1265U	Consumer: 12th Gen Intel Core i5-1245U, Core i7-1265U
	Commercial (vPro): 12th Gen Intel Core i5-1235U, Core i7-1255U	Commercial (vPro): 12th Gen Intel Core i5-1235U, Core i7-1255U
Video card	Intel Iris Xe Graphics	Intel Iris Xe Graphics
RAM	8 GB LPDDR4x 16 GB LPDDR4x 32 GB LPDDR4x	8 GB LPDDR4x 16 GB LPDDR4x 32 GB LPDDR4x
Built-in memory	256 GB 512 GB 1 TB	256 GB 512 GB 1 TB
Front camera	1080p, Windows Hello	1080p, Windows Hello
Communication	Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5. 1	Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1
Ports	2x USB-C with TB4 1x USB-A 3.5 mm audio 1x Surface Connect	2x USB-C with TB4 1x USB-A 3.5mm audio 1x Surface Connect
Sound	Quad Omnisononic speakers, Dolby Atmos	Quad Omnisononic speakers, Dolby Atmos
Battery	19 hours	17.5 hours
Size	308 mm x 223 mm x 14.22 mm	339.5 mm x 244 mm x 14.5 mm
Weight	Alcantara: 1265 g Metal: 1288 g	Metal: 1542 g
Color	Platinum (Alcantara), black	Platinum, black

The Intel Surface Pro 9 and Surface Laptop 5 are expected to be available by the end of October, while the ARM Surface Pro 9 is due out by the end of November.

Microsoft is expected to show off the new Surface devices on October 12 at a presentation: Surface Pro 9, Surface Laptop 5, Surface Studio 3 and a range of accessories.