- Hard drives increase, but performance is a problem in data centers
- Meta considers QLC Flash as a solution, fill the gap between hard drives and TLC
- With SSD QLC 512 to planned, Meta moves away from E1.S and E3
Hard drives are always the essential storage choice for most data centers, mainly because they are cheaper and use less energy than the FLASH TLC.
But while the hard drives are increasingly large, their input / exit performance did not maintain themselves. Consequently, the bandwidth by Téraoctet has decreased, forcing data centers to move data frequently accessible to TLC Flash or over -production storage.
In a recent Facebook engineering blog article, Meta described her approach to integrate QLC Flash as a solution to these challenges. Flash QLC has existed since 2009, but adoption has been slow due to limited capacity, high cost and endurance in lower drafting.
SSD QLCs are the future
Meta explained that he considers QLC as the common ground between hard drives and SSD TLC. The technology offers enough performance for workloads that previously reached 16 TB and 20 TO hard drives and takes care of large I / O tasks that require more than hard drives. Since most of the energy consumption in flash storage comes from the entries, the lower writing activity of QLC makes it an optionable and energy efficient option.
Although QLC is currently cheaper than TLC, it is not yet at a price for a general deployment. Energy savings make it an attractive option for certain workloads, and recent progress makes the flash format more practical. The arrival of the NAND QLC 2 TO matrix and the generalized use of batteries at 32 DIE lead to a higher storage density and the SSD QLC should evolve more quickly than TLC. This will ultimately help improve the efficiency of the server while reducing costs.
Meta provides that the SSD QLCs reach capabilities as important as 512 TB and see the factors E1.S and E3 as dead when they arrive for its needs. Instead, he intends to focus on U.2-15mm and the DirectFlash module of Pure Storage for the QLC scale in its infrastructure.
Meta also refines its storage software to manage the high density nature of QLC. Since SSD QLCs have a big gap between reading and writing speeds, appropriate planning is necessary to maintain performance.
As QLC technology is advancing, Meta expects her role in data centers to develop, a view that is shared by Storagereview.
Brian Beeler of the written site: “Our tests have strengthened the role of QLC in the storage of the AI. A recent deep dive explored how SSD D5336 of Soligm takes place in the control workloads for the formation of the AI model. These tests have shown that although the SSD TLCs always lead to heavy writing environments, the SSD QLC hold their own capacity, efficiency and reading of performance – which makes it a strong option for AI pipelines. “”
