A week after Samsung announced that its 750 EVO solid state drive will soon be available in a capacity of 500 GB, the company said that it has started to mass produce the technology industry's first 512 GB Non-Volatile Memory Express PCIe SSD in a single ball grid array package named the PM971-NVMe.
In simpler terms, Samsung has launched mass production of a very small SSD, smaller than a person's thumb and a postage stamp, and the company is aiming for the breakthrough component to be used in ultra-slim laptop computers and next-generation PCs.
While cutting down in size, Samsung was able to still incorporate all the important components of an SSD into the PM971-NVMe, including the DRAM, controller and NAND flash memory. The new SSD also does not sacrifice performance in the downsizing.
According to Samsung senior VP for the Memory Product Planning and Application Engineering Team Jung-bae Lee, the new SSD is capable of triple the performance of the regular SATA SSD, while offering storage capacities of up to 512 GB and in the smallest size possible.
Lee believes that the SSD will allow manufacturers to develop slimmer computers without affecting the user experience.
The PM971-NVMe is really small, measuring only 20 millimeters by 16 millimeters by 1.5 millimeters and weighs only 1 gram. In comparison, a dime weighs 2.3 grams. The volume of the new SSD is about one-hundredth of an HDD or 2.5-inch SSD, and its surface area is about one-fifth of the M.2 SSD.
Despite its relatively miniscule size, the SSD is still capable of read speeds of up to 1,500 MB per second and write speeds of up to 900 MB per second, translating to being able to transfer a 5 GB video file in just three seconds.
In addition to the 512 GB capacity, the PM971-NVMe will also be produced with 256 GB and 128 GB options. The SSD will be available to all Samsung clients within the month.
