Samsung launches 16 terabyte SSD

Samsung presented several new products during its keynote at the Flash Memory Summit 2015, including an SSD of just under 16 terabytes. The storage memory is housed in a 2.5″ form factor with SAS connection and uses the new 48-layer 256Gb TLC v-nand.

It is not known how the chips are contained in the PM1633a, but the German site Golem suspects that it concerns several printed circuit boards with 256Gb Tlc modules in one 2.5″ housing. A simple calculation shows that there are at least 480 256Gb of v -nand-dies should be in. The PM1633a is the successor to the PM1633 that was presented at CES with up to 3.84TB of storage.To top it off, the company showed a 2u case, packed with 48 of the new SSDs. The total capacity will then be 768 TB. According to the presentation, the system can handle 2 million iops.

A logical consequence of the production of 256Gb tlc-v-nand with 48 layers, the successor to the 32-layer 3d-v-nand, is that the future generation of 850 Evo SSDs will be equipped with this flash memory instead of the currently applied 128Gb tlc flash in the Evos. The South Korean manufacturer announced that production of these Evos will begin “this month.” The use of 256Gb flash should make production cheaper.

In addition to a lot of storage space, the company also presented the ‘fastest’ SSD, the PM1725. The drive will be available in a 3.2TB 2.5″ variant or a 6.4TB hhl variant. The maximum read speed is 1 million iops, but writes are ‘only’ with 120,000 iops. Golem compares that with the fastest disks from HGST and Intel, respectively 743,000/140,000 iops and 440,000/290,000 iops, impressive is the guaranteed 5-year shelf life at 32TB of daily write operations.