Good work ADATA - now make your SATA SSDs less sucky.
hmm thanks, seems like false advertising, because I bought it direct from samsung store online, and samsung store online says its 3 bit MLC.
Anything more than 1 bit per cell (Single-Level Cell aka SLC) is Multi-Level Cell aka MLC. So a 2-bit-per-cell chip is MLC, a 3-bit-per-cell chip is MLC, a 4-bit-per-cell chip is MLC... it's just that the term "MLC" was originally used to refer to only 2-bits-per-cell chips when it was the only NAND in town apart from SLC. Now we have TLC (Triple-Level Cell) for 3 bits/cell and now QLC (Quad-Level Cell) for 4 bits/cell.
So technically your TLC drive is an MLC drive too, just as a QLC drive is technically an MLC drive. But yes, Samsung is playing fast and loose by using "MLC" to refer to their TLC drives.
Aside: I always wondered why the terminology is SLC, MLC, TLC, QLC. It would've been far simpler and more descriptive to just use the number of bits instead (so SLC would be 1LC, MLC = 2LC, TLC = 3LC, ...). Not only would this not allow for marketing shenanigans, it would completely avoid the crap that's gonna arise when we get to:
- 5 bits/cell NAND (can't call them quintuple-layer because that would be QLC which we already have for quad, so they'll have to be penta-layer aka PLC)
- 6 bits/cell NAND (can't call them sextuple-layer because we already have SLC, so they'll have to be hex-layer aka HLC)
- 7 bits/cell NAND (can't call them septuple-layer because we already have SLC, can't call them heptuple because we already have HLC, so what???)
