Facebook talks about WORM QLC NAND flash memory

Over at the Flash Memory Summit, Facebook gave a presentation about a new memory technology called WORM storage. Short for Write Once Read Many, this type of memory is ideal for companies like Facebook that need to archive very large amounts of data, but also be able to access it very quickly.

This will be achieved with QLC NAND flash memory, which features four bits per cell, resulting in 16 individual voltage stages for each cell. QLC-based SSDs could enable storage capacities of upwards of 100TB per disk, but the catch is that they're rated at only ~150 write cycles.

This is fine for archival storage requiring WORM workloads, and you still maintain NAND speeds when it comes to reading that data later on, meaning that decade old Facebook post will appear in your browser just as quickly as the one you posted ten minutes ago.

Facebook also shared some Intel Optane SSD benchmark results from RocksDB. Compared with the Intel P3600, the Optane prototype offered triple the throughput and a 10x latency reduction.

Via: PC Perspective