As we discussed in the analysis of Project Silica , the future of data storage relies on fundamentally changing the medium from silicon to quartz glass. However, optical glass storage is still in its infancy. To bridge the gap between the mechanical hard drives of the past and the optical drives of the future, engineers had to completely rethink the physical architecture of the modern Solid-State Drive (SSD). For decades, the technology sector relied on Moore’s Law - the observation that we could consistently shrink transistors and double the density of a microchip every two years. A few years ago, we hit a physical wall. We ran out of horizontal space. Here is the engineering physics of how 3D NAND bypassed the limits of Moore's Law by stacking memory cells vertically into microscopic skyscrapers. The Physics of the Silicon Ceiling Early SSDs utilized a flat, two-dimensional architecture called planar NAND. Millions of microscopic memory cells were arranged side-by-side on a silic...
Nearly twenty years ago, I started a blog called The Path is Too Deep, a geeky reference to a rare computer error message. A great deal of life has happened since then, a life I would like to share. So, here again, are some random bits of unfiltered Chris.