Ten Year Anniversary of Core 2 Duo and Conroe: Moore’s Law is Dead, Long Live Moore’s Law
by Ian Cutress on July 27, 2016 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Core 2 Duo
- Conroe
- ITRS
- Nostalgia
- Time To Upgrade
Looking To The Future: NAND Flash Scales Up to 64 TB SSDs in 2030
Over the past few years, the NAND Flash industry has gone through two major shifts in technology: the movement from 1 to 2 to 3 bits per cell, which directly increases bit density and capacity, and also moving from planar flash to variants of 3D stacking. Stacking can refer to individual NAND dies, as well as stacking those dies into a single package: both of these features are being extensively investigated to increase density also. There are two main drivers for this: reduction in cost, and capacity. However, despite this, the predictions in the ITRS report for NAND flash are primarily looking at improvements to numbers of layers rather than lithography changes or moving to more bits per cell.
As we can see, TLC (according to the report) is here to stay. QLC, or whatever you want to call it, is not mentioned. The two changes are the number of memory layers, moving from 32 today to 128 around 2022 and then 256/512 by 2030, and the number of word-lines in one 3D NAND string. This gives a product density projection of 256 Gbit packages today to 1 Tbit packages in 2022 and 4 Tbit packages in 2030.
If we apply this to consumer drives available today, we can extrapolate potential SSD sizes for the future. The current Samsung 850 EVO 4 TB uses Samsung’s 48-layer third generation V-NAND to provide 256 Gbit TLC parts. Alongside the 4 TB of memory, the controller requires 4 GB of DRAM, which is another concern to remember. So despite the report stating 256 Gbit in 32-layer, we have 256 Gbit in 48-layer, which is a difference primarily in die-size predictions for the report. Still, if we go off of the product density we should see 12 TB SSDs by 2020, 16 TB in 2022, 48 TB in 2028 and 64 TB drives in 2030. It’s worth noting that the ITRS report doesn’t mention power consumption in this table, nor controller developments which may be a substantial source of performance and/or capacity implementations.
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e1jones - Wednesday, July 27, 2016 - link
My E8400 is still my daily driver, 4x 2gb and an SSD swapped in later as the boot drive. Still runs great, except it tends to get bogged down by the TrustedInstaller and the Firefox memory leaks.rarson - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
I've got an E8600 in an Abit IP35 Pro motherboard. I was having a hard time finding DDR2-1066 last I looked, so I settled for 800. With an SSD and 7870, it's surprising how well it still games. I don't think I'll upgrade the GPU again just due to the fact that I'm limited to PCI-e 2.FourEyedGeek - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
You could get a higher end GPU and still benefit from increased performance, then get a new CPU motherboard combo when you want too.BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, July 27, 2016 - link
I just upgraded out of a Q6600 and 4GB DDR2 about 2 months ago and I admit that I was still kicking around the idea of leaving it alone as I was pulling the motherboard out of the case. I replaced it with a cheap AMD 860k and 16GB DDR3 which really hasn't done a lot to improve the system's performance. In retrospect, I think I could realistically have squeezed another couple of years out of it, but the motherboard's NIC was iffy and I really wanted reliable ethernet.As for laptops, I've got a couple C2Ds kicking around that are perfectly adequate (T2310 & P8400) for daily use. I really can't see any point in replacing them just yet. Core was a good design through all its iterations.
Beany2013 - Wednesday, July 27, 2016 - link
I like your style - rather than drop $100 on a midlevel intel NIC, you replace an entire platform.I strongly approve of these economics :-)
Michael Bay - Thursday, July 28, 2016 - link
USB3 is kind of nice.BrokenCrayons - Thursday, July 28, 2016 - link
Well the NIC wasn't the only reason, but it was the last in a series of others that I was already coping with that tipped the scales. The upgrade was under $200 for the board, processor and memory so it really boiled down to one weekend dinner out to a mid-range restaurant. It was worth it for more reliable Steam streaming and fewer VNC disconnects as that wired ethernet port is the only means by which I regularly interact with my desktop since it has no monitor and is crammed into a corner in my utility room.artk2219 - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link
Why didn't you go for an FX if you dont mind me asking? You liked the FM2+ platform a bit better?BrokenCrayons - Friday, July 29, 2016 - link
Actually, I didn't give much of anything in the system a very close look before buying. I admittedly did about twenty minutes of research to make sure the 860k and the bottom feeder motherboard I'd picked would play nicely together before making a purchase. So the CPU & motherboard pair were the result of laziness and apathy rather than a preference for FM2+.artk2219 - Monday, August 1, 2016 - link
Ah ok gotcha, I just wanted to share that if you had a microcenter near you they sell FX 8320E's bundled with motherboards for 125 to 170 depending on which board you want to use. That can be quite the steal and a great base for a new cheap system once you bump the clocks on the 8320E.