Micron announced that it has started manufacturing SSDs based on 176-layer QLC technology for customer and centric storage markets. As said by the company, these 176-layer QLC NAND chips that have started shipping represent an industry first.
Production of 176-layer MLC (multi-layer cell) chips began in late 2022 by Micron. But moving memory technologies into the QLC space will allow the development of high-capacity SSDs at lower price points.
The new Micron 2400 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD is now reaching mainstream PCs to showcase this breakthrough. Micron will even offer the 2400 SSD in the smallest 22x30mm M. 2 form factor available in 2TB capacity. It will also be available in 22×42 mm and 22×80 mm form factors.
The 176-layer QLC chips offer 33% greater I/O efficiency and up to 24% reduction in read latency compared to the company’s 96-layer QLC. The 2400 SSDs will be offered in 512GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities. As is typically the case, the highest-capacity model offers 4,500 MBps and 4,000 MBps sequential read/write speeds. The random read speed is rated at 650K and the random read speed at 700K IOPS.
When it comes to durability, Micron gives 600 TBW for the 2 TB model. The 512 GB SSD stays at 150 TBW. The company also highlighted that idle power consumption has been reduced by 50% compared to previous generation QLC SSDs.
Carrying 176-layer QLC chips, SSDs primarily target the low-budget HDD segment. If we look at the performance figures, it does not come close to the MLC SSDs, which reach 7,000 MBps. But the performance is good enough for most consumers and the price/performance ratio is important here.
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