Samsung calls the arrival of 860 QVO and 980 QVO SSDs with qlc-nand

By admin On Oct 18, 2018

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Samsung is going to release the 860 QVO and the 980 QVO, respectively a sata and an nvme ssd with qlc-nand. There will also be new variants of the current 970 Evo and the PM981 with 96-layer TLC Nand memory.

Samsung mentioned the arrival of the ssds with qlc nand memory at its Tech Day event, where AnandTech was present. Samsung has not disclosed details about the QVO SSDs, but the 860 QVO is probably the SATA SSD Samsung talked about in August. Then the manufacturer started producing sata ssds with qlc-nand for consumers, with capacities of 1TB, 2TB and 4TB. Those SSDs should come out this year.

For the SATA SSDs, Samsung uses its fourth-generation v-nand memory, which consists of 64 layers. These are qlc nand chips with a capacity of 1Tb each. 32 of those chips are needed to reach the capacity of 4TB. The Samsung 980 QVO will be an NVME SSD with QLC Nand memory. It is not yet clear whether it also uses the 1Tb-dies.

Samsung says it wants to release a new QLC Nand chip with a capacity of 512Gb in the second half of 2019. So it has a lower capacity than the current 1Tb die, but the performance would be much higher. Such qlc memory is probably intended for nvme SSDs in the higher segment, possibly also for the 980 QVO.

It is not yet clear when the Samsung 860 QVO and 980 QVO will be released. Samsung has not yet released consumer SSDs with qlc-nand. Other manufacturers have done that. Intel was the first with its 660p series and Micron announced its Crucial P1 SSDs this week. In both cases, these are nvme models in the budget segment. There are no sata ssds with qlc memory yet, they will probably be cheaper than the current sata ssds with tlc nand.

Samsung also announced at its Tech Day that there will be new variants of the 970 Evo and the PM981 with 96-layer TLC Nand. Current models use tlc nand memory which consists of 64 layers. The new versions will be named 970 Evo Plus and PM981a. The PM SSD is an OEM variant of the 970 Evo for consumers. For example, the PM SSDs can be found in many laptops.

The upgrade to tlc-nand with more layers will increase the sequential write speed. Also, the random read and write speeds of the PM981a variant would improve considerably, bringing them close to the 970 Evo and 970 Evo Plus. The capacities remain the same as the current SSDs from 250GB to 2TB. It is not yet known when the renewed SSDs with Tlc-nand will be released.