Feed: AnandTech
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Title: Micron Ships Denser & Faster 276 Layer TLC NAND, Arriving First In
Micron 2650 Client SSDs

Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2024 11:15:00 EDT
Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21492/micron-s...

Micron on Tuesday announced that the company has begun shipping its 9th
Generation (G9) 276 layer TLC NAND. The next generation of NAND from the
prolific memory maker, Micron's latest NAND is designed to further push the
envelope on TLC NAND performance, offering significant density and
performance improvements over its existing NAND technology.

Micron's G9 TLC NAND memory features 276 active layers, which is up from 232-
layers in case of Micron's previous generation TLC NAND. At this point the
company is being light on technical details in their official material.
However in a brief interview with Blocks & Files, the company confirmed that
their 276L NAND still uses a six plane architecture, which was first
introduced with the 232L generation. At this point we're assuming Micron is
also string-stacking two decks of NAND together, as they have been for the
past couple of generations, which means we're looking at 138 layer decks.

Micron TLC NAND Flash Memory 276L 232L
(B58R) 176L
(B47R) Layers 276 232 176 Decks 2 (x138)? 2 (x116) 2 (x88) Die Capacity 1
Tbit 1 Tbit 512 Gbit Die Size (mm2) ~48.9mm2 ~70.1mm2 ~49.8mm2 Density
(Gbit/mm2) ~21 14.6 10.3 I/O Speed 3.6 GT/s
(ONFi 5.1) 2.4 GT/s
(ONFi 5.0) 1.6 GT/s
(ONFI 4.2) Planes 6 6 4 CuA / PuC Yes Yes Yes

On the density front, Micron told Blocks & Files that they have improved
their NAND density by 44% over their 232L generation. Which, given what we
know about that generation, would put the density at around 21 Gbit/mm2. Or
for a 1Tbit die of TLC NAND, that works out to a die size of roughly 48.9mm2,
comparable to the die size of a 512Gbit TLC die from Micron's older 176L
NAND.

Besides improving density, the other big push with Micron's newest generation
of NAND was further improving its throughput. While the company's 232L NAND
was built against the ONFi 5.0 specification, which topped out at transfer
rates of 2400 MT/sec, their new 276L NAND can hit 3600 MT/sec, which is
consistent with the ONFi 5.1 spec.

Meanwhile, the eagle-eyed will likely also pick up on Micron's ninth-
generation/G9 branding, which is new to the company. Micron's has not
previously used this kind of generational branding for their NAND, which up
until now has simply been identified by its layer count (and before the 3D
era, its feature size). Internally, this is believed to be Micron's 7th
generation 3D NAND architecture. However, taking a page from the logic fab
industry, Micron seems to be branding it as ninth-generation in order to keep
generational parity with its competitors, who are preparing their own 8th/9th
generation NAND (and thus cliam that they are the first NAND maker to ship
9th gen NAND).

And while this NAND will eventually end up in all sorts of devices -
including, no doubt, high-end PCIe Gen5 drives thanks to its high transfer
rates - Micron's launch vehicle for the NAND is their own Micron 2650 client
SSD. The 2650 is a relatively straightforward PCIe Gen4 x4 SSD, using an
unnamed, DRAMless controller alongside Micron's new NAND. The company is
offering it in 3 form factors - M.2 2280, 2242, and 2230 - with a modest set
of capacities ranging from 256GB to 1TB.

Micron's 2650 NVMe SSDs offer sequential read performance of up to 7000 MB/s
as well as sequential write performance of up to 6000 MB/s. As for random
performance, we are talking about up to a million read and write IOPS,
depending on the configuration.

Micron 2650 SSD Specifications Capacity 1 TB 512 GB 256 GB Controller Micron
PCIe Gen4 DRAMless NAND Flash Micron G9 (276L) TLC NAND Form-Factor,
Interface Single-Sided M.2-2280/2242/2230
PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.4c Sequential Read 7000 MB/s 7000 MB/s 5000 MB/s
Sequential Write 6000 MB/s 4800 MB/s 2500 MB/s Random Read IOPS 1000K 740K
370K Random Write IOPS 1000K 1000K 500K SLC Caching Yes TCG Opal Encryption
2.02 Write Endurance 600 TBW 300 TBW 200 TBW

The performance of the drives scales pretty significantly with capacity,
underscoring how much parallelism is needed to keep up with the PCIe Gen4
controller. The rated capacity of the drives scales similarly, with the
smallest drive rated for 200TBW (800 drive writes), while the largest drive
is rated for 600 TBW (600 drive writes).

"The shipment of Micron G9 NAND is a testament to Micron's prowess in process
technology and design innovations," said Scott DeBoer, executive vice
president of Technology and Products at Micron. "Micron G9 NAND is up to 73%
denser than competitive technologies in the market today, allowing for more
compact and efficient storage solutions that benefit both consumers and
businesses."

Micron's G9 276-layer TLC NAND memory is also in qualification with customers
in component form, so expect the company's partners to adopt it for their
high-end SSDs in the coming quarters. In addition, Micron plans Crucial-
branded SSDs based on its G9 NAND memory..

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