Meet the worlds fastest data transfer solid state drive from Samsung Electronics, the semiconductor giant will mass produce the 250-gigabyte SATA solid state drive incorporating the company’s sixth-generation V-NAND technology for global PC makers.
Remarkably, the company was able to launch the new generation V-NAND SSD in just 13 months, this was possible mainly due to its reduced mass production cycle by four months by bringing cutting-edge 3D memory technology to volume production. This is a big win as it will now be able to leap into the next generation of SSD’s in even faster speeds.
Utilising its unique ‘channel hole etching’ technology, the new drive adds around 40-percent more cells to the previous 9x-layer single-stack structure. This is achieved by building an electrically conductive mold stack comprised of 136 layers, then vertically piercing cylindrical holes from top to bottom, creating uniform 3D charge trap flash (CTF) cells.
As the mold stack in each cell area increases in height, NAND flash chips tend to become more vulnerable to errors and read latencies. To overcome such limitations, Samsung has incorporated a speed-optimised circuit design that allows it to achieve the fastest data transfer speed, at below 450 microseconds (μs) for write operations and below 45μs for reads. Compared to the previous generation, this represents a more than 10-percent improvement in performance, while power consumption is reduced by more than 15 percent.
In addition, the number of channel holes required to create a 256Gb chip density has decreased to 670 million holes from over 930 million with the previous generation, enabling reduced chip sizes and less process steps. This brings a more than 20-percent improvement in manufacturing productivity.
Leveraging the high-speed and low-power features, Samsung plans to not only broaden the reach of its 3D V-NAND into areas like next-generation mobile devices and enterprise servers, but also into the automotive market where high reliability is extremely critical.
Samsung plans to offer 512Gb three-bit V-NAND SSD and eUFS in the second half of this year. The company also expects to expand production of higher-speed and greater-capacity sixth-generation V-NAND solutions at its Pyeongtaek campus starting next year.
