Samsung Makes History with New V-NAND Based Memory

Updated: August 21, 2013

In a bold move surely to turn heads, Samsung released a statement that it is now mass-producing the industry’s first 3D Vertical NAND (V-NAND) Flash Memory, that offers 128Gb density in a single chip.

At the Flash Memory Summit in 2013, Samsung’s 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 to the world.

This technology will open new doors in storage capacity as it evolves and hopefully will lower prices on higher capacity SSDs in the near future.

For the last 40 years conventional memory has relied on the floating gate-based planar structure, but V-NAN breaks away from that using 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. So in essence Samsung is reinventing the wheel as it breaks away from a technology that has been the standard for almost half a century and shows solid innovation on their behalf.

Initially, this new memory will be aimed at Enterprise servers and data centers and will come in 2 choices of storage capacities upon launch. The new Samsung V-NAND SSD will come in both a 960GB and 480GB version that should offer substantial performance increases than its predecessor SSDs.

The V-NAND SSDs should offer 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. As this technology grows and matures we will see it begin to trickle down to the desktop market. Samsung is really ahead of the curve with this as previous predictions had this launch coming out next year. Thanks for reading Tech Of Tomorrow. I think this is awesome news for us all as something new has been born into our PC world.

Source: Tom’s Hardware

Ca news PC Samsung SSD tech

warlordianx

wow this technology is so good
Ricardo Wright

gonna be $1200 for like 500GB isn’t it?
- Bob Hope
  
  No, the idea of this technology is that it is cheaper to manufacture and offers greater data density.
- Damon
  
  you forgot a zero…. they said enterprise market.
toshan

I hope it will be even cheaper than the 840 .
- grifft
  
  hahaha, that is never going to happen, not for a few years.
  - Bob Hope
    
    It will be when it hits the consumer market. The only SSD that matters at this point is the 840 EVO.
Turnip

we need faster SATA ports.
- Tanner
  
  Or simply a new interconnect that isn’t capped at 6Gb/s…
  - Bob Hope
    
    What if I told you that SATA3 doen’t bottleneck current-gen SSDs?
    - Keven Brochu
      
      The speed of current SSD already reach SATA 3 speed. If you want a SSD that goes over 550MB/s, you need either a RAID array or a PCI-express SSD.
    - Tom
      
      This is correct, current gen SATA3 doenst cause a bottle neck. Yes, it may limit the total speed an SSD can deliver, it doesn’t bottleneck it at all when it comes to real world scenarios. Even going, from SATA II to SATA III, you won’t really see a real world performance boost. The NAND is whats behind here, not the SSD.
      - Tom
        
        EDIT* Not the SATA port
- Damon
  
  12Gb SAS is out. perhaps it will make its way down to sata controllers in the next year or so.
CroHellMan

So, when will this be available? I need now when the new 4930k comes out. =)
- Bob Hope
  
  Wanna know a secret? The 4930K will have almost the exact same performance as the 3930K, which has been available for 2 years. If you want a new processor that’s faster than what’s available now, wait for Haswell-E (late 2014).
  - Elric Phares
    
    Bob, you are wrong sir, at least 10-15% performance increase between the 2..
    - I_review_OS’s
      
      Hi Elric !
    - JazZPhantom
      
      Is that not what this guy said though? ALMOST exactly the same performance. I’d consider a %10-15 increase to be pretty small. Even still a %10-15 increase in benchmarks is not really enough to produce a noticeable in real application, and justify an upgrade. Instead the suggestion is to wait for Haswell-E.
      - Elric Phares
        
        Well since you seem to live in some world that 10-15% is nothing when that is about the average on both CPUs and GPUs what is there to say. So in your eyes all new releases offer really nothing as there are no amazing jumps between revisions. Show me on instance of where the performance is jumping up more than that per launch? 10-15% is not the same performance man that is the average.
Tanner

So amazing!!! Samsung is brilliant
Reeve Chan

Arh…. Just upgraded my desktop with two 256GB SSD, and now they have
a single one of this gives you even more capacity.
- Bob Hope
  
  SSDs in greater than 256GB capacities have been around for a while. Also, RAID 0 is faster than a single drive.
  - James Edmonds
    
    Might as well have waited for the ASUS raidr. I hear that thing’s fast as hell.
- Damon
  
  i take it you missed all the ~1tb drives that are out right now. Samsung actually has a 1TB SSD out, look up the EVO 840 1TB drive. many others have 960GB-1TB drives out as well
Sachin

^that is most likely why they are gearing it towards commercial use for now :/
worldgate989

we need these on memory chips, 128gb of memory? Yes please.
Kerron Wotless Weekes

thought d interface speed would have been greater doh
James Edmonds

YES! Been waiting for this for ages now!
Ever since CustomPC magazine interviewed the scientists that came up with the idea I’ve been wanting it.
Greg Reavis

I love how fast tech advances. If you think about it 15 years ago people would have laughed in your face if you told them you could fit 128GB on a single chip.
- HowdyDoody
  
  No, they would laugh at you for saying you could store memory on a chip instead of a disc.