Tag: NAND replacement

The end of NAND is near, maybe…

Posted on by Ray in Data readability, Data retention, SSD storage, Storage longevity, Strategic Inflection Points, System effectiveness, System quality

In honor of today’s Flash Summit conference, I give my semi-annual amateur view of competing NAND technologies.

I was talking with a major storage vendor today and they said they were sampling sub-20nm NAND chips with P/E cycles of 300 with a data retention period under a week at room temperatures. With those specifications these chips almost can’t get out of the factory with any life left in them.

On the other hand the only sub-20nm (19nm) NAND information I could find online were inside the new Toshiba THNSNF SSDs with toggle MLC NAND that guaranteed data retention of 3 months at 40°C.   I could not find any published P/E cycle specifications for the NAND in their drive but presumably this is at most equivalent to their prior generation 24 nm NAND or at worse somewhere below that generations P/E cycles. (Of course, I couldn’t find P/E cycle specifications for that drive either but similar technology in other drives seems to offer native 3000 P/E cycles.)

Intel-Micron, SanDisk and others have all recently announced 20nm MLC NAND chips with a P/E cycles around 3K to 5K.

Nevertheless, as NAND chips go beyond their rated P/E cycle quantities, NAND bit errors increase. With a more powerful ECC algorithm in SSDs and NAND controllers, one can still correct the data coming off the NAND chips.  However at some point beyond 24 bit ECC this probably becomes unsustainable. (See interesting post by NexGen on ECC capabilities as NAND die size shrinks).

Not sure how to bridge the gap between 3-5K P/E cycles and the 300 P/E cycles being seen by storage vendors above but this may be a function of prototype vs. production technology and possibly it had other characteristics they were interested in.

But given the declining endurance of NAND below 20nm, some industry players are investigating other solid state storage technologies to replace NAND, e.g.,  MRAM, FeRAM, PCM and ReRAM all of which are current contenders, at least from a research perspective.

MRAM is currently available in small capacities from Everspin and elsewhere but hasn’t really come up with similar densities on the order of today’s NAND technologies.

ReRAM is starting to emerge in low power applications as a substitute for SRAM/DRAM, but it’s still early yet.

I haven’t heard much about FeRAM other than last year researchers at Purdue having invented a new non-destructive read FeRAM they call FeTRAM.   Standard FeRAMs are already in commercial use, albeit in limited applications from Ramtron and others but density is still a hurdle and write performance is a problem.

Recently the PCM approach has heated up as PCM technology is now commercially available being released by Micro.  Yes the technology has a long way to go to catch up with NAND densities (available at 45nm technology) but it’s yet another start down a technology pathway to build volume and research ways to reduce cost, increase density and generally improve the technology.  In the mean time I hear it’s an order of magnitude faster than NAND.

Racetrack memory, a form of MRAM using wires to store multiple bits, isn’t standing still either.  Last December, IBM announced they have demonstrated  Racetrack memory chips in their labs.  With this milestone IBM has shown how a complete Racetrack memory chip could be fabricated on a CMOS technology lines.

However, in the same press release from IBM on recent research results, they announced a new technique to construct CMOS compatible graphene devices on a chip.  As we have previously reported, another approach to replacing standard NAND technology  uses graphene transistors to replace the storage layer of NAND flash.  Graphene NAND holds the promise of increasing density with much better endurance, retention and reliability than today’s NAND.

So as of today, NAND is still the king of solid state storage technologies but there are a number of princelings and other emerging pretenders, all vying for its throne of tomorrow.

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Image: 20 nanometer NAND Flash chip by IntelFreePress

ReRAM to the rescue

Posted on by Ray in Data density, Energy efficiency, SSD storage, Strategic Inflection Points

I was at the Solid State Storage Symposium a couple of weeks ago where Robin Harris (StorageMojo) gave the keynote presentation. In his talk, Robin mentioned a new technology on the horizon which holds the promise of replacing DRAM, SRAM and NAND called resistive random access memory (ReRAM or RRAM).

If so, ReRAM will enter the technological race pitting MRAM, Graphene Flash, PCM and racetrack memory as followons for NAND technology.  But none of these have any intention of replacing DRAM.

Problems with NAND

There are a few problems with NAND today but the main problem that affects future NAND technologies is as devices shrink they lose endurance. For instance, today’s SLC NAND technology has an endurance of ~100K P/E (program/erase) cycles, MLC NAND can endure around 5000 P/E cycles and eMLC somewhere in between.  Newly emerging TLC (three bits/cell) has less even endurance than MLC.

But that’s all at 30nm or larger.  The belief is that as NAND feature size shrinks below 20nm its endurance will get much worse, perhaps orders of magnitude worse.

While MLC may be ok for enterprise storage today, much less than 5000 P/E cycles could become a problem and would require ever more sophistication in order to work around these limitation.    Which is why most enterprise class, MLC NAND based storage uses specialized algorithms and NAND controller functionality to support storage reliability and durability.

ReRAM solves NAND, DRAM and NvRAM problems.

Enter ReRAM, it has the potential to be faster than PCM-RAM, has smaller features than MRAM which means more bits per square inch and uses lower voltage than racetrack memory and NAND.    The other nice thing about ReRAM is that it seems readily scaleable to below 30nm feature geometries.  Also as it’s a static memory it doesn’t have to be refreshed like DRAM and thus uses less power.

In addition, it appears that  ReRAM is much more flexible than NAND or DRAM which can be designed and/or tailored to support different memory requirements.   Thus, one ReRAM design can be focused on standard  DRAM applications while another ReRAM design can be targeted at mass storage or solid state drives (SSD).

On the negative side there are still some problems with ReRAM, namely the large “sneak parasitic current” [whatever that is] that impacts adjacent bit cells and drains power.  There are a few solutions to this problem but none yet completely satisfactory.

But it’s a ways out, isn’t it?

No it’s not. BBC and Tech-On reported that Panasonic will start sampling devices soon and plan to reach volume manufacturing next year.   Elpida-Sharp  and HP-Hynix are also at work on ReRAM (or memristor) devices and expect to ship sometime in 2013.  But for the moment it appears that Panasonic is ahead of the pack.

At first, these devices will likely emerge in low power applications but as vendors ramp up development and mass production it’s unclear where it will ultimately end up.

The allure of ReRAM technology is significant in that it holds out the promise of replacing both RAM and NAND used in consumer devices as well as IT equipment with the same single technology.  If you consider that the combined current market for DRAM and NAND is over $50B, people start to notice.

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Whether ReRAM will meet all of its objectives is yet TBD.  But we seldom see any one technology which has this high a potential.  The one remaining question is why everybody else isn’t going after ReRAM as well, like Samsung, Toshiba and Intel-Micron.

I have to thank StorageMojo and the Solid State Storage Symposium team for bringing ReRAM to my attention.

[Update] @storagezilla (Mark Twomey) said that “… Micron’s aquisition of Elpida gives them a play there.”

Wasn’t aware of that but yes they are definitely in the hunt now.

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Image: Memristor by Luke Kilpatrick