The drive managed to stuff in 16 terabytes into a 2.5-inch SSD package.
By comparison, the largest conventional hard drives made by Seagate and Western Digital is currently limited 8 or 10TB.
The technology behind this drive is the new 256Gbit (32GB) NAND flash drive; twice the capacity of 128Gbit NAND dies that were commercialised by various chip makers last year. To reach such density, Samsung has managed to cram 48 layers of 3-bits-per-cell (TLC) 3D V-NAND into a single die. This is up from 24 layers in 2013, and then 36 layers in 2014.
Historically, NAND flash has been planar, having the functional structures on the chip mostly laid down on a single two-dimensional plane. In a similar way to how logic chips are moving towards 3D transistors, Samsung (and more recently Toshiba and Intel) has been forging ahead with 3D NAND.
With 3D NAND, instead of having just one layer of memory cells on a single plane, it can now have dozens of layers of cells, all standing up next to each other. (The “V” in Samsung’s V-NAND refers to the vertical nature of these cells.) Process-wise, 3D NAND is very complex, but the massive potential density increase makes it worthwhile.
At the Summit, Samsung showed off a server with 48 of these new SSDs, with a total storage capacity of 768 terabytes and performance rated at 2,000,000 IOPS (input/output operations per second). By comparison, the consumer-grade SSD on most personal PCS is capable of around 10,000-90,000 IOPS, depending on the workload.
The actual capacity of the drive is 15.36TB. No word yet on pricing and availability.
This is going to be a huge purchase for movie producers, marketers and also music producers and some other business people. I can't wait to see it in Nigeria.
#Just saying... Lemme go back to my water bottle.
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