Whether through your smartphone gallery, video calling app or social media network, these heartwarming moments of reminiscence are made possible by the NAND flash memory¹ solutions used in today’s smartphones and data centers.

Aside from its technical definition, we can view NAND flash as that which makes it possible to record and save so many special moments. We at Samsung Electronics are working non-stop to provide consumers with the certainty that their most valuable communications will be around indefinitely, and as a technician responsible for the continued advancement of NAND flash in the semiconductor industry, I’d like to share some of these efforts with you.

Pioneering the Era of the Uncharted 3-Dimensional (3D) Vertical Structure

If we were to view the history of the universe as one year, the existence of the human species falls stunningly short of 14 seconds before the end of this year. With more than 170 billion known galaxies constantly expanding, our Sun and the Earth are by no means at the center of our universe’s development. This same analogy can be applied to semiconductors.

If you look at a semiconductor chip smaller than the size of a fingernail through an electron microscope, there lies an entire miniature universe. Despite its thickness of just 1mm, millions of carefully constructed spaces exist within a chip in order to store huge amounts of data.

For many years, NAND flash memory solutions designed to store data featured a two-dimensional (2D) structure, where chips were scaled and laid onto flat surfaces. But these 2D structures had significant limitations in terms of the amount of data that could be stored.

After extensive research to mitigate this issue, Samsung pioneered its V-NAND (with the ‘V’ standing for vertical) flash memory, a solution that connects its cell layers through pierced holes in vertically-stacked 3D space. Samsung is the first company in the world to develop and commercialize such a memory solution.

This 3D V-NAND debuted in 2013, creating an entirely new paradigm for memory semiconductor as compared with the conventional 2D structure that had dominated the world of electronic storage for decades. The technical transformation that it enabled can be compared to the experience of people used to living in 1- or 2-story houses moving into high-rise apartments for the first time.

V-NAND: Representing Samsung’s Mastery of the Semiconductor Solution

These days the V-NAND solution, with its revolutionary vertical 3D structure, has become an industry standard since its groundbreaking introduction.

Back in 2013, the first V-NAND solution developed by Samsung featured 24 layers — but these days it has evolved to almost 200, a number that continues to grow. However, much like with high-rise apartments, simply stacking more layers on top of one another is not everything.

An apartment should be tall but also sturdy, and easily accessible via a secure and efficient elevator as the height of the building increases. What’s more, consideration of noise levels between floors must be made, and due to altitude restrictions, a building’s height is far from limitless.

The same goes for V-NAND solution. Even if the number of layers is similar, a closer look reveals minute differences in functionality and structure. In the world of semiconductors, this can be of the utmost importance as even the smallest difference leads to a tremendously different outcome.

Introducing the Industry’s Smallest Cell, Made Possible by Single-Stack Etching Technology

Let’s go back for a minute or two to 2013.

In order to overcome the limitations of a semiconductor’s planar 2D structure, Samsung developed a product that stacks up cells–in three dimensions. At that time, since the structure did not feature many layers, there was no immediate need to consider the product’s height. However, as the number of layers grew to meet increasing demand for highly-integrated, high-capacity solutions, Samsung engineers had to consider the physical limitations that arose around the product’s height.

Samsung contemplated and began to design solutions for the impending problem of V-NAND height before any other player in the semiconductor industry. The company’s 176-layer 7^th generation V-NAND is similar in height to the industry’s 6^th generation, 100+ layer V-NAND, an innovation made possible thanks to our successful development of the industry’s smallest cell size yet.

Samsung managed to reduce the cell volume up to 35% by decreasing both its surface area and height through highly innovative 3D scaling technology. Any interference between cells that might occur during such a reduction was also controlled. This enables Samsung to stack more layers at lower heights, giving the company an edge in overcoming the anticipated limitations of height.

Samsung is the only one in the industry possessing single-stack etching technology capable of stacking over 100 layers at once and interconnected through more than a billion holes. Leveraging ultra-small cell size and the company’s proprietary single-stack etching technology, Samsung is in an unparalleled position to deliver V-NAND solutions made with several hundred cell layers.

Looking Ahead: Revolutionary 7^th and 8^th Generation V-NAND Solutions

In the second half of this year, Samsung is set to showcase a consumer solid-state drive (SSD) product based on its 7^th generation V-NAND chip, a solution with the smallest cell size yet in the industry. This 7^th generation V-NAND solution is expected to meet the performance requirements of both the 4^th generation PCIe interface (PCIe Gen 4) and, later the 5^th generation (PCIe Gen 5), thanks to its maximum input-output (I/O) of 2.0 gigabits per second (Gbps). Furthermore, the company’s solution will be optimized for multitasking huge workloads, such as simultaneous 3D modeling and video editing.

Samsung is also planning to expand the use of its 7^th generation V-NAND to data center SSDs. Furthermore, in order to encourage companies running data centers to reduce power consumption, Samsung’s low-power solution can help raise power efficiency by 16% over that of its 6^th generation solution.

The company has already secured a working chip of its 8^th generation V-NAND solution featuring over 200 layers and plans to introduce it to the market in accordance with consumer demand.

The Future of Samsung’s V-NAND: Aiming for Over 1,000 Layers

In the semiconductor industry, nothing happens by chance. Pioneering a previously-unknown technology requires not only time, but also a tremendous amount of capital and investment. Samsung has managed to become the world leader in the semiconductor industry in the face of setbacks and other challenges by maintaining the passion, commitment and the sense of duty that allows us to realize a better life for all of those necessary to bring about such innovation.

Just like how the first V-NAND was introduced in 2013 after more than 10 years of research, the company will be the first to overcome the height limit that will come about one day, through our use of 3D scaling technology. Even further down the line, when Samsung’s V-NAND solutions have evolved to feature over 1,000 layers, the company will continue to ensure that its memory solutions offer the industry’s highest reliability.

A New Paradigm of Extended Reality Will Extend the Role of Semiconductors

The world is shifting to a new paradigm of extended reality (XR) thanks to the rapid advancement of technology. In fact, due to the pandemic, the time when XR is set to become a part of all our daily lives has been advanced considerably. The era in which daily lifestyles include an overlap between reality and cyber space draws ever nearer. Moreover, the refinement of IT devices and technologies will require an entirely new approach that will be completely different from anything previously seen—and the role of semiconductors will become more important than ever before.

Unquestionably, Samsung will continue to work to enable a better society by introducing innovative semiconductor products based on robust technological advancements. This will happen so you can rest assured that the precious memories stored on your electronic devices will be around for a very long time to come.

¹ Non-volatile memory semiconductors that retain stored data even when the power is switched off.

The IDC* report, Worldwide Solid State Storage Quarterly Update CY 1Q16, shows that Samsung rose to the leader position in Enterprise SSD sales in Q1 of this year, with the IDC data showing Samsung at 32.4 percent compared to the second place finisher with 16.9 percent. This shows a sharp upswing in Enterprise SSD sales from Q4 of 2015 when Samsung was in a virtual dead heat with its closest competitor with about a 22 percent market share. For the year 2015, IDC showed Samsung with a 20.6 percent share.

“Lately, Samsung’s role in leading the movement to SSDs in the enterprise market has been quite impressive. Samsung’s success in supporting all-flash systems has fueled its rise in enterprise storage thanks to a broad portfolio of SSDs, including offering the highest densities as well as SATA, SAS and NVMe PCIe solutions,” said Jeff Janukowicz, research vice president, SSDs and Enabling Technologies, IDC.

Analyst firm Forward Insights** showed a slightly larger market lead for Samsung, reporting that in the first quarter of 2016, Samsung easily led the enterprise SSD market with a 34 percent share, well above the 19 percent share of the nearest competitor. This compares with a second place Samsung finish with 25 percent of Enterprise SSD market share in Q4 of 2015, according to the analyst firm.

“Samsung has sharply increased its presence in the enterprise storage market as server and flash-array OEMs are seeking to take advantage of the company’s technological leadership, 3D manufacturing and fast, reliable product delivery,” said Greg Wong, founder and principal analyst, Forward Insights. “Samsung is expected to maintain its market position in 2016 and possibly beyond as it leverages its leading position in 3D NAND technology,” he added.

Other industry analysts reported similar or higher market growth for Samsung, in showing it moving into the market share leadership position for enterprise SSDs. For one, TrendFocus*** charted Samsung with a 45 percent leadership position in Enterprise SSD market share for the first quarter of this year, rising from a second place finish with 26 percent share in the fourth quarter of last year.

“The enterprise market is a top Samsung memory focus, so it should come as no surprise that we have now also taken the lead in supplying SSDs to the enterprise, after years of leadership in the client market,” said Jim Elliott, corporate vice president, Memory Marketing, Samsung Semiconductor. “Our securing the No. 1 position in enterprise SSDs has been supported by market leading advances in flash density and performance, and continued success with our 3D V-NAND manufacturing and state-of-the-art controllers,” he added.

Showing rapid market growth in storage support for data centers worldwide, Samsung now has more than 18 SSD families in the enterprise, with a total of over 100 different SKUs.

Enterprise SSDs are designed to comply with the enterprise specifications of JESD218, developed by JEDEC – the industry’s primary standards body, and are intended for use inside servers and consolidated storage systems used in corporate data centers.

Samsung said its rapidly growing role as top SSD supplier in the enterprise follows on its leadership in client (PC) SSD sales over the past six years.

* IDC provides global, regional and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries worldwide with more than 1,100 analysts. IDC market share numbers are based on revenue.

** Forward Insights provides independent market intelligence, and global consulting and information services focusing on semiconductor memories, emerging memory technologies and solid state storage. Forward Insights market share numbers are based on revenue.

*** TrendFocus is a leading market research and consulting firm for the data storage industry providing detailed analysis of the entire industry supply chain. TrendFocus market share numbers are based on units shipped.

First revealed at the 2015 Flash Memory Summit in August, the 15.36TB SSD is based on a 12Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface, for use in enterprise storage systems. Because the PM1633a comes in a 2.5-inch form factor, enterprise storage managers can fit twice as many of the drives in a standard 19-inch, 2U rack, compared to an equivalent 3.5-inch storage drive.

“To satisfy an increasing market need for ultra-high-capacity SAS SSDs from leading enterprise storage system manufacturers, we are directing our best efforts toward meeting our customers’ SSD requests,” said Jung-bae Lee, Senior Vice President, Memory Product Planning and Application Engineering Team, Samsung Electronics. “We will continue to lead the industry with next-generation SSDs, using our advanced 3D V-NAND memory technology, in order to accelerate the growth of the premium memory market while delivering greater performance and efficiency to our customers.”

The unprecedented 15.36TB of data storage on a single SSD is enabled by combining 512 of Samsung’s 256Gb V-NAND memory chips. The 256Gb dies are stacked in 16 layers to form a single 512GB package, with a total of 32 NAND flash packages in the 15.36TB drive. Utilizing Samsung’s 3rd generation, 256-gigabit (Gb) V-NAND technology which stacks cell-arrays in 48 layers, the PM1633a line-up provides significant performance and reliability upgrades from its predecessor, the PM1633, which used Samsung’s 2nd generation, 32-layer, 128Gb V-NAND memory.

Samsung’s new PM1633a SSD provides the opportunity for significant improvements in the efficiency of IT system investments through its high storage capacity and exceptional performance. These performance gains stem from Samsung’s latest vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash technology, as well as the company’s proprietary controller and firmware technology.

The PM1633a SSD sports random read and write speeds of up to 200,000 and 32,000 IOPS respectively, and delivers sequential read and write speeds of up to 1,200MB/s. The random read IOPS performance is approximately 1,000 times that of SAS-type hard disks, while the sequential read and write speeds are over twice those of a typical SATA SSD. Inside the new SSD lie Samsung’s advanced controller units that support the 12Gb/s SAS interface, along with a total of 16GB of DRAM. Samsung also uses specially designed firmware that can access large amounts of high-density NAND flash concurrently.

The 15.36TB PM1633a drive supports 1 DWPD (drive writes per day), which means 15.36TB of data can be written every day on this single drive without failure, a level of reliability that will improve cost of ownership for enterprise storage systems. This drive can write from two to ten times as much data as typical SATA SSDs based on planar MLC and TLC NAND flash technologies.

Further, the drive boasts a highly dependable metadata protection mechanism in addition to featuring a data protection and restoration software tool in case of a momentary blackout, which make enterprise systems more stable and manageable.

Starting with the 15.36TB density, Samsung will provide a wide range of capacity options in its PM1633a SSD line-up – 7.68TB, 3.84TB, 1.92TB, 960-gigabyte (GB) and 480GB later this year. With more choices in storage capacity, Samsung is reinforcing the competitiveness in its SAS SSD line-up. The Samsung PM1633a SSD line-up is expected to rapidly become the overwhelming favorite over hard disks for enterprise storage systems.