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In a report from The Register, Micron is planning to release quad-level flash cell drives later this year. QLC flash stores 4bits/cell vs TLC flash's 3 meaning a 6TB TLC SSD could become an 8TB QLC SSD using this technology, and start encroaching on the nearline disk market. QLC flash does however have a shoter working life than TLC, and is expected to be more suitable for read-intensive applications. The QLC drive will be built on 3D NAND and have a SATA interface, and a feature set optimized for hyperscale use.
I don't see how much of an initial impact QLC is going to make on the consumer market, but only time will tell. Instead of new storage I would have loved to have seen some DDR4 announcements, I'm running out of kidneys to get some.
The Micron presentation also revealed that both an enterprise client and consumer NVMe SSD were coming. They would have faster access (~100micro-second latency) than equivalent SAS or SATA interface SSDs (~150micro-second latency). The client one will use PCIe 3.0 x4 lane and offer TCG Opal v2.0 and Pyrite security.
I don't see how much of an initial impact QLC is going to make on the consumer market, but only time will tell. Instead of new storage I would have loved to have seen some DDR4 announcements, I'm running out of kidneys to get some.
The Micron presentation also revealed that both an enterprise client and consumer NVMe SSD were coming. They would have faster access (~100micro-second latency) than equivalent SAS or SATA interface SSDs (~150micro-second latency). The client one will use PCIe 3.0 x4 lane and offer TCG Opal v2.0 and Pyrite security.