Semiconductor manufacturing company Micron Technology Inc. has announced that its 232-layer QLC NAND flash memory is now in mass production. The memory is being shipped to enterprise storage customers and sampled to original equipment PC manufacturers. This 232-layer QLC NAND provides improved performance for various storage use cases, including mobile, client, edge, and data center storage. Micron has stated that it is more compact, enabling thin and light devices, and has a higher bit-density with NAND I/O speeds of 2400 MT/s, a 50% improvement over the prior generation. Additionally, it offers better read and programming performance over the earlier generation.
The Micron 2500 Client SSD integrates the 232-layer QLC NAND to enhance everyday computing and improve the PC user experience. It has shown superior PCMark 10 experience benchmark results, outperforming the average scores in the SSD segment. Micron anticipates that as the industry shifts to QLC-based storage, the 2500 SSD will further accelerate QLC adoption in PCs due to its world-class user experience and value proposition.
The 2500 SSD boasts up to 7.1 GB/s sequential read speeds, superior to TLC-based NAND and QLC-based NAND SSDs in the segment. The accelerated caching feature enables faster read and write performance under various applications. The 232-layer QLC NAND enables even the smaller capacity 512GB SSD to provide endurance to support 13 4K movie downloads per day, every day for three years.
Available in 22 x 30mm, 22 x 42mm, and 22 x 80mm form factors, the 2500 SSD comes in capacities ranging from 512GB up to 2TB. The compact 2TB 22 x 30mm option is suitable for handheld gaming devices. The single-sided design of these SSDs offers better flexibility for OEMs to integrate the drives into systems that range from ultra-thin devices to workstations.