Word of the Day: NAND flash wear-out

Word of the Day Daily updates on the latest technology terms |April 18, 2017

NAND flash wear-out NAND flash wear-out is the breakdown of the oxide layer within the floating-gate transistors of NAND flash memory. All of the bits in a NAND flash block must be erased before new data can be written. When the erase process is repeated, it eventually breaks down the oxide layer within the floating-gate transistors of the NAND flash. The erase process involves hitting the flash cell with a relatively large charge of electrical energy. This causes the semiconductor layer on the chip itself to degrade a little, which over time, can increase bit-error rates. At first, these errors can be corrected with software, but eventually the error correction code routines in the flash controller can't keep up with these errors and the flash cell becomes unreliable.   Endurance for a NAND flash drive is typically stated as total bytes written (TBW), which is a product of write cycles and the logical drive capacity. Endurance may also be expressed as the number of full drive writes per day, with one drive write being equal to the logical drive capacity. Most enterprise-grade solid-state drives are designed to last between three and five years. The NAND flash wear-out figures that the industry typically cites are 100,000 program/erase (P/E) cycles for single-level cell (SLC) flash, 30,000 P/E cycles for enterprise multilevel cell (eMLC) flash and 10,000 or fewer P/E cycles for multilevel cell (MLC) flash. Quote of the Day "While NAND flash technology ushered in the solid-state era, it is really just the harbinger of products to come that will challenge the traditional concepts of memory and storage." - Rich Castagna   Trending Terms NAND flash memory solid-state storage 3D NAND flash MLC flash SLC flash   Learning Center The status of NAND flash memory now and in the near future As the NAND flash memory shortage eases, 3D NAND, and even more advanced technologies, promise a bright flash future for storage. NAND flash technology is just the beginning NAND flash technology delivers a high level of performance at a high rate of speed, but storage vendors are developing products that will greatly expand solid state's role. How NAND flash degrades and what vendors do to increase SSD endurance Storage Switzerland senior analyst Eric Slack dives into the technical aspects of SSD cell degradation span and what vendors are doing to increase SSD endurance. NAND flash shortage has SSD supply, pricing impact NAND flash shortage could slow price declines and strain SSD supplies as manufacturers confront challenges in shift from 2D to denser 3D technology. Best practices for solid-state drive storage technology Solid-state drive storage (SSD) technology best practices center on identifying I/O-intensive applications so that data storage technology can provide the greatest benefit to IT organizations. Here are our top 10 best practices for SSDs. Writing for Business Servers equipped with flash storage are increasingly common and can _________ reduce latency. A. farther B. further Answer       Stay In Touch For feedback about any of our definitions or to suggest a new definition, please contact me at: mrouse@techtarget.com   Visit the Word of the Day Archives and catch up on what you've missed!   FOLLOW US About This E-Newsletter This e-newsletter is published by the TechTarget network. To unsubscribe from Whatis.com, click here. Please note, this will not affect any other subscriptions you have signed up for. TechTarget, Whatis, 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466. Contact: webmaster@techtarget.com Copyright 2016 TechTarget. All rights reserved.