Intel and Micron have been working together on several storage technologies like the 3D Xpoint with their most recent collaboration being the most significant. Thanks to Micron’s 3D NAND flash memory, the 4TB SSD barrier has been broken by the unveiling of a 10TB SSD.
This breakthrough comes after both companies were in agreement about how planar NAND flash had reached its limit with 4TB SSD storage. Micron has developed the first floating gate cell design for 3D NAND allowing capacities of 256GB for multi level cell and 384GB for triple level cell die. The technology also offers considerable gains in read/write and I/O speed.
The enterprise drive is expected to hit the market later this year. While a 13TB SSD is available from Fixstars, the $13,000 price tag makes it cost prohibitive and extremely limited to a select few users.