Today Micron unveiled a new line of MLC NAND cells which it claims improves write endurance over traditional cells by 600%.

Micron’s new MLC Enterprise NAND device achieves 30,000 write cycles–a 6x increase in endurance when compared to standard MLC NAND. And for enterprise applications that are more performance driven, Micron today also introduced a 34nm SLC Enterprise NAND device that achieves 300,000 write cycles – a 3x increase in endurance when compared to standard SLC NAND.

Additionally, leveraging the full performance capability of NAND, Micron’s newest Enterprise NAND products also support the ONFI 2.1synchronous interface, delivering a 4- to 5x improvement in data transfer rates when compared to legacy NAND interfaces. Micron’s 34nm Enterprise NAND portfolio includes a 32Gb MLC NAND chip and a 16Gb SLC NAND chip that can be configured into multi-die, single packages supporting densities up to 32GB MLC and 16GB SLC, respectively.

The new cells are an evolution of the company’s 34nm NAND technology developed in conjunction with Intel Corporation. Micron will begin sampling the new products this year, and will begin volume shipments in spring of 2010.

Reality check: Micron’s definition of “standard” MLC and SLC NAND cells is nebulous at best. For example, SSD OEM Mtron offers a 32G SLC NAND product with a 5,000,000 cycle write endurance. Put another way, that’s 100GB of data erased and written to the drive every day for 85 years. That is a complete rewrite of the disk’s contents three times a day.

Even Intel’s MLC-based X25-M G2 drive is estimated to have a 31,500 cycle write endurance, which is good for 20GB of erase/write sequences a day, every day, for five years. If that’s not enough, the company has included a 100GB/day margin of error.

So, when an OEM quotes an endurance figure at you–particularly in the funky fresh world of NAND–take a look around. It might not be as impressive as it seems.