Samsung Intros First 3D V-NAND-based SSD, Up to 960GB

By Jane McEntegart
published

That didn't take long.

Earlier this month, Samsung announced that it was now mass producing the industry's first 3D Vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory, offering a 128 gigabit (Gb) density in a single chip. Speaking during a keynote address at the Flash Memory Summit 2013, Samsung VP E.S. Jung compared the 3D V-NAND and its resulting "disruptive innovation" to "a Digital Big Bang in the global IT industry," and introduced the first SSD based on its 3D V-NAND technology.

 

V-NAND breaks away from the floating gate-based planar structure that has been used in conventional memory over the past 40 years by utilizing the Samsung's proprietary vertical cell structure based on 3D Charge Trap Flash (CTF) technology, and vertical interconnect process technology to link the 3D cell array. By applying both of these technologies, it's able to provide over twice the scaling of 20nm-class planar NAND flash. 

Aimed at enterprise servers and data centers, the Samsung V-NAND SSD comes in 960 GB and 480 GB capacities. The former offers a 20 percent increase in sequential and random write speeds via 64 dies of MLC 3D V-NAND flash each offering 128 Gb of storage with a 6 Gb/s SATA IC. The V-NAND also offers 35,000 program erase cycles.

Jane McEntegart
Topics
Storage
11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • alchemy69
    I wasn't expecting these to hit the market for another year or so.
    Reply
  • CaedenV
    wow, they really mean business! I wan't expecting these to come out until next calendar year at the earliest.

    I guess the real question is when we are going to see consumer models, and when we are going to see these on next gen controllers that can do 2-4TB of storage... those may take a little while.
    Reply
  • IndignantSkeptic
    I thought Samsung's obsoleting technology has just been preemptively obsoleted by this:

    http://www.tomshardware.com/news/RRAM-terabyte-Crossbar-stackability-NAND-Flash,23810.html
    Reply
  • aoneone
    Can anyone please explain in a nutshell how this is better than the already 512 Gb SSD's out there? I'm assuming faster read/write cycles is that it? Thanks in advance!
    Reply
  • CrArC
    Talk about fast time to market. I can only assume they were developing this drive alongside the NAND and it was already validated and ready for production. If not, that's insane, and awesome.

    Want. When are the consumer models coming out? Can we assume "fairly flippin' quickly" based on how quickly this SSD hit the market after they announced the new NAND?
    Reply
  • jonny_76
    Sounds fantastic all we know is 35k W/E cycles and density.

    What are the detailed specs ?
    -IOPS ?
    -warranty ?
    -pricing?
    -mass prod availability
    -tradeoffs
    Reply
  • dalethepcman
    11382928 said:
    Can anyone please explain in a nutshell how this is better than the already 512 Gb SSD's out there? I'm assuming faster read/write cycles is that it? Thanks in advance!

    The benefit of this is increased density, more data in the same physical space. This should allow for slightly higher profits for Samsung and slightly lower cost's to the consumer once yields are of the appropriate proportions . Basically they can now drop 960(1024)GB into the space they used to put 480(512)GB using the same amount of silicon at the same fabrication scale(20nm).

    Usually higher data transfer rates go hand in hand with increased data density, but SSD's already meet or exceed SATA3 specifications, so im not sure how much more performance you can expect until a faster bus becomes implemented.
    Reply
  • Chris Bailey
    Now if SSD prices would ever drop to the prices of harddrives
    Reply
  • simmiy
    What is the cost of this. If crossbar is as good as they say then Samsung will just buy it out.
    Reply
  • stevejnb
    11391400 said:
    Now if SSD prices would ever drop to the prices of harddrives

    "ever drop"? Yeah, because it has been so long... I've seen SSD's as common consumer items for *maybe* a year and a half now. I've been buying and using hard drives for about twenty years. Hard drives are an old, established technology with decades of R&D and production cycles that went into trying to make them big and cheap. SSD's have a tiny fraction of that kind of time and resources put into them. I'm sure they'll drop in price, but they are essentially a very young technology as a primary commercial drive.
    Reply