One of the main criticism against MCL memory chips (most for specifications but not really for everyday usage) is the limited writing cycles (around 10,000) supported by the chips currently found in almost all SSD models. After having completed 10,00 cycles, cells are ignored by the controller as tagged as "unreliable". Micron announced that one can improve the MLC chips cells, and especially the quality dedicated to corporate, claiming now 30,000 cycles. Engraved at 34 nm, this new MCL memory will enter mass production in Q1 2010.
Intel already used in its SSD models, memory chips cells produced by Micron, and we bet that SAnta Clara's Giant will most likely be the first customer for the first batch of 30,000 cycles ready MCL chips. This could also change the standard specification of MCL-based SSD to 30,000 cycles.
So, let's do some math. Let's consider a 160 GB SDD, able to deliver 200 MB/s steady writing speed. It takes 800 seconds to fill it up. So, quick extrapolation would give us 800 x 10,000 seconds to use all cells. In other words, 278 days at 8 hours constant usage (without taking in account the time required to erase those cells.). AS, nobody has such usage of a SSD, current units certified for 10,000 writing cycles will have a lifetime superior to most of current computer life cycle, and could be hosted in several successive hardware models before really losing its reliability.
