Product of the Week: Innodisk's 112-Layer 3D TLC SSDs

October 04, 2021

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The bleeding edge of NAND memory technology is focused almost exclusively on the consumer and data center markets. But as embedded systems incorporate more consumer- and data center-like capabilities, industrial-grade systems need to take advantage of breakthroughs in performance, too.

Innodisk's 112-layer 3D TLC SSDs are derived from a 96-layer variant of the same NAND technology that was developed for mass market applications. However, these new 6.0 Gbps SATA III SSDs have been remanufactured using a new process that guarantees more than 3,000 program/erase (P/E) cycles, long-term product support through at least 2025, and capacities from 128 GB up to 8 TB across the portfolio. 

The 3TG6-P and 3TE7 Series NAND flash products support a maximum of four channels with write speeds of up to 520 MBps, a 3.3 W to 5.9 W max power consumption, and 0℃- 70℃ operating temperatures that makes them applicable in industrial applications like 5G devices and infrastructure, smart surveillance, and smart medical. 

The devices have passed shock ([email protected]) and vibration (20G@7~2000Hz) testing, and exhibited a mean time between failure (MTBF) of greater than 3 million hours.

The Innodisk 3D TLC SSDs in Action:

Reliability is what really sets the 69.8 x 100.0 x 6.8 mm SATA III SSDs apart from competitive solutions. This is enabled by features like an integrated thermal sensor, standard ATA security, and optional hardware write protections. But it is extended by specialized firmware developed in-house at InnoDisk.

The firmware not only extends the capacity of certain SKUs to the 8 TB mentioned previously, but also adds layers of reliability protection to prevent drops in performance and minimize the affects of write amplification factors (WAFs). It also facilitates additional security via the built-in iDataGuard and iPowerGuard, which protect the system and its data in the event of sudden power loss:

• iDataGuard is designed to halt SSD performance when low power is detected. An algorithm within iDataGuard picks up drops in voltage and informs the SSD controller. The SSD then completes the last operation and stops taking commands from the host to ensure that the data that is stored and can be accessed when power is restored.
• iPowerGuard acts as another layer of protection in the case of power loss, but instead of focusing on the incident of power loss when it happens, it’s designed to protect the SSD from power loss during startup and shutdown.

Furthermore, additional protections against unauthorized data and device access are enabled by the integration of hardware-accelerated AES-256 encryption and support for the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Opal 2.0 security subsystem specification for self-encrypting drives (SED). The AES rapid encryption engine allows the SSD to randomly generate encryption keys, while the Opal SSC Specification specifies how to activate trusted storage capabilities on the 3D TLC NAND SSDs as well as revert them to their manufacturing state.

The devices aslo feature RAID protection, which utilizes ECC correction by low-density parity check (LDPC).

Getting Started with Innodisk 3D TLC NAND SSDs:

The JEDEC 218-compliant SSDs come with a three-year warranty, Innodisk estimates mass production of the 112-Layer 3D TLC series in Q4 2021.

More features of the Innodisk 3D TLC 112-Layer Series SSDs can be found online or in the resources section below.

Additional Resources:

• Innodisk 112-Layer 3D TLC NAND Storage Solutions Product Page: www.innodisk.com/epaper/innonews/202109-BiCS5/eng/index.html

• 2.5” SATA SSD 3TG6-P Product Page: www.innodisk.com/en/products/flash-storage/ssd/25_sata_ssd_3tg6-p

• 2.5" SATA SSD 3TE7 Product Page: www.innodisk.com/en/products/flash-storage/ssd/25_sata_ssd_3te7

• iDataGuard Overview: www.innodisk.com/en/technology/stability/idata-guard

• iPowerGuard Overview: www.innodisk.com/en/technology/stability/ipower-guard

• 3D TLC 112-Layer Series Overview: www.innodisk.com/Download/media/Innodisk-3D-TLC-112-Layer-Series.pdf