It’s no secret that SSDs are significantly faster than HDDs, but are significantly more expensive per gigabyte than their mechanical counterparts. New developments from Micron and SK Hynix could get bigger and better SSD than ever before, lowering the current 100TB limit to make room for larger drives.
At the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, SK Hynix announced that it has developed what it calls “the world’s first 512GB 238-layer 4D TLC NAND.” Although it’s about 35% more levels than the previous flagship device, the company boasts of being 50% faster when transferring files and 21% more energy efficient when reading data (which is very useful considering the current cost). of running a gaming PC). .
In July, Micron introduced its latest model, which is slightly lower than the SK Hynix at 232 layers. Still, it’s a monumental leap from its 176-layer model that debuted in late 2020, and its smaller size means it can pack more silicon into the same physical space than ever before, or perhaps make NVMe SSDs even smaller. little ones.
Do the new SSDs mean the end of hard drives?
It’s a bit ambitious of me to say that this heralds the end of hard drives, as mechanical hard drives are used almost everywhere. While servers will no doubt cling to a cost-effective storage solution for quite some time, personal PCs could slowly but surely move away from the norm. If bigger and faster SSDs are available and affordable, it won’t be hard to choose one the next time you build a gaming PC or buy an upgrade, at which point the number of hard drives will start to shrink.
According to Blocks and Files, we won’t be able to say exactly how this will affect consumers until SK Hynix goes into mass production in the first half of 2023. Who knows? Maybe I just long for the days when everyone has a better SSD to play games with and we never have to hang out in a lobby to load each other up in a game.
Source : PC Gamesn
