Micron Outs Crucial MX300 With 3D NAND, Coming This Month
Micron played host to members of the media today to discuss new enterprise products and advances in NAND flash technology. At the event, several new products were introduced, but only one was glossed over--the upcoming MX300.
Until today's event, we expected Crucial to release 3D NAND flash in a consumer SSD around the Computex time frame (early June). Micron jumped the gun and preannounced the new Crucial MX300 that will feature Micron's new 256Gbit 3D NAND flash. Yields must be quite strong for the new flash that has already entered production. According to Micron, the new MX300 will come to market in April, a full two months before we expected the new product.
As mentioned, Micron only glossed over the information, but we know Micron's 3D NAND flash uses 32 stacked layers to reach 256Gbit density. This is twice the current density of 16nm planar NAND density per die. The new flash should also cut the manufacturing costs in half. The existing 16nm and new 3D NAND share the same wafer size but the new part should double the density.
The new flash should allow Crucial to achieve 2 TB of capacity easily when paired with the next generation controller.s We expect to see large SSD price reductions once Micron's 3D flash takes hold and becomes the standard for SSDs in mid to late 2016.
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Chris Ramseyer was a senior contributing editor for Tom's Hardware. He tested and reviewed consumer storage.
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manleysteele I with you on that, jaber2. I wonder how long it will be before we see a drive with the SM 2260 controller. It should be a barn burner.Reply -
ammaross Who else is more excited about the all-around price drops more than the actual MX300 device itself? :)Reply -
ScreaminHDD Samsung introduced 3D Nand for SSDs with the 850 line. It'll be nice to see benchmark results between the two brands in a few months.Reply -
littleleo I would really like to see the specs on the MX300s and see how they stack up to you know who, lol.Reply -
falchard Very happy with the MX series of SSDs so far. I have 2 in my system. An MX100 and MX200.Reply -
Sakkura Finally some serious 3D NAND competition for Samsung. And hopefully we can all forget about the BX200 soon.Reply -
littleleo The BX200 is still popular beacuse of the price, the MX200s are about gone so we are waiting on the MX300 now. The Samsung 750 EVO and the SanDisk X400 are cutting into the BX200 share.Reply -
hannibal Lets see when that price drop will happen... 2017 or later...Reply
It depends a lot on what Samsung does. At first these will compete with Comparative todays Prises...