The world's first 1TB solid-state drive will soon be available for commercial use.
In a statement released Tuesday, Samsung said it has begun the production of 3D Vertical NAND flash memory, also known as 3D V-NAND, which will allow data centers and cloud server applications to improve management of workload for emails, social networks and web browsing, and drive up PC storage to 1TB.
Samsung expects data facilities to begin the replacing their current 2-bit SSDs with its newer 3-bit multi-level-cell SSDs later this year.
"Following the last year's introduction of 3-bit NAND-based SSDs for PC markets, our new 3-bit SSD for data centers will help considerably in expanding the market base for SSD," said Young-Hyun Jun, Samsung executive vice president for memory sales and marketing. "We expect SSD market growth will gain momentum as this new SSD delivers significant improvements in data center investment efficiency, leading to full-fledged commercialization of SSDs in IT systems later this year."
The 3D V-NAND, stacks 32 chips in vertical fashion, compared with the 24 layers of cell arrays found in the first-generation V-NAND. Each chip transfers data to the next through a proprietary interconnect. As devices get smaller and demand for storage gets larger, manufacturers have to come up with ways to increase storage capacity while decreasing storage device sizes. Chip stacking, which is already used in memory chips and system on a chip (SoC) devices, is one way to jack up storage capacities.
Samsung's new PM853T SSD for data centers comes in 240GB, 480GB and 960GB. It can read data randomly at 90,000 IOPS (input/output per second) and write at 14,000 IOPS. Samsung also introduced a line-up of solid-state drives based on the 3D V-NAND technology for PCs. The SSDs come in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB options, which can push manufacturers to drive PC storage that currently tops at 512GB.
"We increased the availability of our 3D V-NAND by introducing an extensive V-NAND SSD line-up that covers the PC market in addition to data centers," said Young-Hyun. "Look for us to provide a consistent, timely supply of high-performance, high-density V-NAND SSDs as well as core V-NAND chips for IT customers globally, contributing to fast market adoption of 3D NAND technology."
Samsung says the new V-NAND storage drives are two times as durable as planar MLC-based NAND drives in writing data and consume 20% less power.
Research firm Gartner says the global memory market will see a revenue rise from last year's $75.5 billion to almost $80 billion by the year 2017. Gartner also says the V-NAND business will account for $44 billion or more than 50% of the entire industry.
