Samsung, Sun Develop 'ultra-endurance' SSD

San Jose (CA) - Samsung and Sun Microsoystems today said that the two companies have developed a single-level-cell NAND flash memory device for use in solid state drives that offers "much higher endurance levels than any other flash memory device on the market today."

Compared to other SLC SSDs, the new memory provides a a "five-fold increase" in data write-and-erase cycles, which, at least to our knowledge, would put the device into the 5-10 million read-write-cycle range. Samsung said that its server-grade SLC memory will provide a 100-fold increase over conventional hard drives, in the number of data transfers (input/output per second or I/OPS) per watt

According to the memory manufacturer, the new memory could be used for video streaming, high-transaction data processing, search engine operations and other high-speed server functions.

"We have been working with Sun to develop this new 8Gb server-grade SLC flash memory, which will give IT managers the best in high-density, high-endurance memory design with markedly less energy consumption than we see today," said Jim Elliott, vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Semiconductor. "Sun sees incredible upside to using server grade SLC NAND flash to accelerate customers’ applications, and we plan to incorporate this technology into our line of servers and storage," said Michael Cornwell, lead technologist for flash memory, Sun Microsystems, in a prepared statement.