Technology leaders need every advantage to manage vast amounts of data in ways that satisfy their customers, end users, and CFOs. According to SkyQuest Technology Consulting, the SSD market continues to take center stage as he is on pace to reach a value of $104.4 billion by 2028. report (opens in new tab)But how do tech leaders decide which drives are best?
There is an open debate about the merits of Triple Level Cell (TLC) and Quad Level Cell (QLC) drives in the quest to improve performance, reduce space requirements, and improve cost efficiency. The problem is that drive technology is constantly evolving, and what you think you know about QLC SSDs can get in the way of your operational and financial goals.
“We are now using Generation 4 PCIe 4.0 QLC SSDs and have come a long way in terms of some of the challenges faced by earlier generation QLC drives. Built for mainstream use, they offer decent performance at a lower cost than TLC SSDs.
Let’s break some persistent myths about QLC.
QLC endurance
mythology: In normal operation, QLC drives wear out so quickly that frequent replacement costs hurt their cost effectiveness.
truth: Generational advances and proper firmware implementation have alleviated this concern. Today’s 4th generation QLC drives offer up to 5x more endurance than previous generations.[1]
evidence: Compared to all-TLC SSD implementations, choosing all-QLC reduces your total cost of ownership (TCO) by up to 20% and allows you to scale capacity more efficiently.[2] In the near future, Solidigm will release QLC SSD products that offer even higher capacities and better TCO.
example: When SSDs were first introduced to data centers in 2010, the behavior and workload needs of drives were not understood. In hindsight, I’ve found that storage architects tend to “oversize” his SSDs. You can see this by comparing the average endurance levels of his SSDs that shipped a few years ago. Today ~85%[3] SSDs shipped to data centers have an endurance of 1 drive write per day (DWPD) or less. The reason for this “right sizing” is a better understanding of workload and drive behavior. For endurance, studies with large sample sizes found 99%[5] Up to 15% system utilization[6] Usable endurance of the drive until the end of its life.
So QLC won’t wear out as quickly as it once did.
QLCPerformance
mythology: QLC’s performance can’t come close to a TLC drive.
truth: QLC media was originally paired with an older SATA interface that limited speed. His new PCIe-based QLC drives are within hundreds of MB/s of TLC in many critical benchmarks and real-world workloads.
evidence: Solidigm QLC SSDs perform better on sequential reads compared to entry TLC — Base P5316 (opens in new tab) SSDs. For example, Solidigm’s D5-P5316 offers 7,000 MB/s sequential read, while Koxia’s CD6-R is 5,500 MB/s. This is about a 27% improvement over TLC. Kioxia CD6-R (opens in new tab).[4]
example: Solidigm QLC SSD scales efficiently with performance suitable for mainstream and read-intensive workloads. “QLC SSDs offer similar performance to reads and more petabytes of writes available than class-leading TLC SSDs. says so.
QLC Myths Broken
QLC technology is mature and offers the reliability and performance you need to meet your business goals. Despite the improvement, QLC is still priced lower than TLC, offering more savings and lower TCO. With the advancements in QLC offered by Solidigm, it may be time to make the switch.
About Solidim: California-based Solidigm is a leading global provider of innovative NAND flash memory solutions. Originating from the sale of the Intel® NAND and SSD business to SK hynix in 2021, Solidigm is fueled by the ingenuity of his over 2,000 employees in 20 locations around the world. For more information, see: solidigm.com (opens in new tab) and follow them twitter (opens in new tab) and LinkedIn (opens in new tab).
Means:
[1] Up to 5x higher endurance than generation – Solidigm D5-P5316 30.72TB (formerly Intel®) (22,930 TBW) and Solidigm D5-P4326 15.36TB (formerly Intel®) (4,400 TBW) endurance (64K random writes) Compare.
[2] Baseline server assumptions of 20K active users, 128 TB minimum capacity, 300 Gbps target throughput, and 85% cache hit ratio. Hybrid array per server configuration of 2 x Intel Xeon Scalable 6330 processors, 512 GB memory, 20 x 7.68 TB Solidigm D7-P5510 with 56 Gbps throughput. Net storage for hybrid array cost (CPU + memory + RAID controller + NVMe expander + chassis + power supply): $12,930. 2 x Intel Xeon Scalable 6338N processors, 512 GB memory, 16 x 30.72 TB Solidigm D5-P5316 with 54.4 Gbps throughput All QLC per server configuration. Net storage for all QLC server costs (CPU + memory + RAID controller + NVMe expander + chassis + power supply): $12,930. SSD prices are Solidigm Recommended Customer Prices (RCP) as of 9/24/2021. Actual prices are subject to change and may not reflect prices used in TCO models. Assuming operating costs of 1,100 watts/server, $0.12/kWh of power and cooling, and an annual rack cost of $75.76 per RU.
[3] Source: Forward Insights Datacenter, May 2019. Approximate global data center SSD shipments for 2020-2023 are rated at ≤1 DWPD endurance.
[4] Source: data taken from P5316 (opens in new tab) and Kioxia CD6-R (opens in new tab)
[5,6] Source: University of Toronto study of 1.4 million industry SSDs in enterprise storage deployments. A Study of SSD Reliability in Large-Scale Enterprise Storage Deployments (opens in new tab)
