Samsung reveals 16TB SSD – ‘world’s largest’ storage drive for data centres
Fri 14 Aug 2015
Samsung has this week announced the release of its new 3D vertical-NAND flash memory chip, which it claims is the world’s highest capacity computer storage device.
The PM1663a drive, which has a formatted capacity of 15.36TB, has been designed exclusively for use in data centres and industries with huge demand for speed and capacity.
The high-performance drive is a standard 2.5inch measure but is double the thickness of a common chip used in consumer devices. Samsung has achieved the massive data capacity by layering 480 of its new 256GB third-generation V-NAND flash chips, each containing 48 levels of NAND cells.
Samsung announced the new SSD at a flash memory conference in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday in a keynote address titled ‘Memory Technology Advances Shape a New Era in Flash Innovation’. The South Korean electronics giant did not reveal any details on price or availability, but industry experts expect the chip to sell for no less than £5,000.
Samsung Semiconductor VP Jim Elliot commented: “We are providing high-end capabilities and capacities for all of our latest SSDs, something we believe will elicit a high degree of interest from OEMs and computer enthusiasts throughout the world. We understand the performance needs of our customers in a rapidly expanding SSD universe and are determined to meet those needs.”
Samsung is at the cutting-edge of storage design – claiming to deliver the highest densities by achieving the most layers possible on V-NAND chips. It argues that its third-generation drives are as much as 2.2 times faster and over 63% more power effective than its second-generation models.
Young-Hyun Jun, president of Samsung’s memory division, said that his company’s storage accelerates the growth of high-performance and high-density SSD markets, continually offering “higher efficiency based on improved performance, power utilisation, and manufacturing productivity.”
As many as 48 of the new 2.5inch advanced chips can be installed into a standard data centre 2U server chassis, delivering up to 768TB of storage.
Closest drive rivals from Seagate Technology and Western Digital measure maximum capacities of 8TB and 10TB respectively.
Samsung is currently introducing consumer SSDs with 2TB densities.
