May 21st was a big day for us – we announced that we are shipping and selling the industry’s first QLC SSD, the 5210 ION. Our QLC SSDs deliver the features, capacity, performance and value to challenge HDDs in environments where performance is critical and the cost of SSDs has historically been too high.

In this blog I’ll take a quick look at QLC and highlight a few applications that are ideal fits.

A Quick Look at QLC

QLC NAND packs 33 percent more data into every cell compared to its triple-level cell (TLC) equivalent. QLC’s additional storage density — coupled with a more approachable price point — can have an immense effect on your read-mostly workloads (TLC is best for mixed use due to its higher endurance).

QLC’s combination of benefits helps broaden the number of applications that can take advantage of NAND value.

Ideal Applications for QLC – Machine Learning, Read-Intensive Artificial Intelligence and Real-Time Analytics

These applications share two common threads: they read more than they write, and they excel when quickly fed with massive data. Once captured, much of this data doesn’t change. QLC can enable us to read quickly and sort faster, understand better and act sooner.

A few final thoughts…

I’ve highlighted just three applications that are great fits for QLC (there are many, many more). When choosing your applications and workloads for QLC, ask three questions:

Q: How much value is locked away in your data?

Q: How can QLC help you take advantage of that pent-up asset?

Q: How can QLC help you transform data into a competitive advantage?

You can get started on our QLC page right now.

I’d like to hear how you see QLC moving your business. Tweet me @GreyHairStorage or connect with Micron on Twitter @MicronStorage and on LinkedIn.