- Each MLC cell actually holds one of 4 distinct charge levels, and thus can encode 2 bits. Same for TLC (8 levels, 3 bits) and QLC (16 charge levels to encode 4 bits).
- "3D" when talking about solid-state memory, would usually refer to vertically stacked cells [1], which gives you more cells per square millimeter at the same manufacturing process node. This is orthogonal to xLC.
[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/23/sandisk_takes_the_bi...