Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that for the first time in the industry, it has successfully verified Compute Express Link (CXL) memory operations in a real user environment with open-source software provider Red Hat, leading the expansion of its CXL ecosystem.

Due to the exponential growth of data throughput and memory requirements for emerging fields like generative AI, autonomous driving and in-memory databases (IMDBs), the demand for systems with greater memory bandwidth and capacity is also increasing. CXL is a unified interface standard that connects various processors, such as CPUs, GPUs and memory devices through a PCIe® interface that can serve as a solution for limitations in existing systems in terms of speed, latency and expandability.

“Samsung has been working closely with a wide range of industry partners in areas from software, data centers and servers to chipset providers, and has been at the forefront of building up the CXL memory ecosystem,” said Yongcheol Bae, Executive Vice President of Memory Product Planning at Samsung Electronics. “Our CXL partnership with Red Hat is an exemplary case of collaboration between advanced software and hardware, which will enrich and accelerate the CXL ecosystem as a whole.”

In this latest development, Samsung has optimized its CXL memory for Red Hat Enterprise Linux® (RHEL) 9.3 and verified memory recognition, read and write operations in Red Hat’s KVM and Podman environments. This allows data center clients to easily use Samsung’s CXL memory without having to make additional adjustments to their existing hardware.

“The successful verification of Samsung’s CXL Memory Expander interoperability with Red Hat Enterprise Linux is significant because it opens up the applicability of the CXL Memory Expander to IaaS¹ and PaaS²-based software provided by Red Hat,” said Marjet Andriesse, Senior Vice President and Head of Red Hat Asia Pacific. “This is an important milestone in the integration of hardware and software to build an open-source ecosystem for next-generation memory development.”

Samsung and Red Hat are currently working together on a “RHEL 9.3 CXL Memory Enabling Guide” to help users utilize Samsung’s CXL memory on RHEL 9.3 and build high-performance computing systems in various user environments.

The two companies first signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in May 2022 to collaborate on next-generation memory and will continue their efforts through the Samsung Memory Research Center (SMRC) in developing CXL open-source and reference models. The ongoing partnership covers a range of storage and memory products, including NVMe SSDs, CXL Memory, computational memory/storage and fabrics.

¹ Infrastructure as a Service.
² Platform as a Service.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today unveiled an array of next-generation memory and storage technologies during Flash Memory Summit 2022, held at the Santa Clara (California) Convention Center, August 2-4. In a keynote titled “Memory Innovations Navigating the Big Data Era,” Samsung spotlighted four areas of technological advancement driving the big data market — data movement, data storage, data processing and data management — and revealed its leading-edge memory solutions addressing each field.

Petabyte Storage: Maximizing Server Utilization

To maximize data center efficiency in an increasingly data-driven world, Samsung introduced a next-generation storage technology, ‘Petabyte Storage.’ The new solution will allow a single server unit to pack more than one petabyte of storage, enabling server manufacturers to sharply increase their storage capacity within the same floor space with a minimal number of servers. High server utilization will also help to lower power consumption.

Memory-Semantic SSD: AI- and ML-Optimized Storage

Samsung announced its ‘Memory-semantic SSD’ that combines the benefits of storage and DRAM memory. Leveraging Compute Express Link (CXL) interconnect technology and a built-in DRAM cache, Memory-semantic SSDs can achieve up to a 20x improvement in both random read speed and latency when used in AI and ML applications. Optimized to read and write small-sized data chunks at dramatically faster speeds, Samsung’s Memory-semantic SSDs will be ideal for the growing number of AI and ML workloads that require very fast processing of smaller data sets.

Telemetry: Enabling More Reliable Data Center Management

As SSDs become more widely adopted in data centers, technology to manage these storage drives with the highest degree of reliability is becoming increasingly critical. Samsung’s telemetry technology gathers human-readable metadata from key components inside customers’ SSDs such as NAND flash and DRAM as well as SSD controllers and firmware. Based on this broad set of telemetry information, data centers can detect and prevent any potential problems ahead of time, enabling a more reliable and efficient operation.

Updates to Prior Milestones

Additionally, Samsung informed its keynote audience of important product updates to previously-announced mobile storage and high-performance SSD milestones.

The industry’s first UFS 4.0 mobile storage, developed by Samsung in May, is scheduled to enter mass production this month. The new UFS 4.0 will be a critical component in flagship smartphones that require large amounts of data processing for features like high-resolution images and graphics-heavy mobile games, and will later be used in mobility, VR and AR.

Samsung also announced market availability of two enterprise SSDs. Its PM1743, a CES 2022 Innovation Awards honoree, is the industry’s first PCIe 5.0 SSD, while the PM1653 is the first 24G SAS SSD, both now in mass production. The company further highlighted its paradigm-shifting SmartSSD and CXL DRAM, which have been designed to avoid bottlenecks in current memory and storage architectures.

“The IT industry is facing a new set of challenges brought on by the explosive growth in big data, and this underscores the importance of a robust, cross-industry ecosystem,” said Jin-Hyeok Choi, keynote speaker and executive vice president of Memory Solution & Product Development at Samsung Electronics. “We are committed to developing transformative memory technologies that can bring far-reaching changes in how we move, store, process and manage data for future AI, ML and HPC applications, as we navigate these challenging tides together with industry partners.”

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has successfully developed a second generation of its pioneering SmartSSD.

The new proprietary computational storage incorporates data processing functionality within a high-performance SSD. Unlike existing SSDs, Samsung’s SmartSSD can process data directly, thereby minimizing data transfers between the CPU, GPU and RAM. This technology can avoid the bottlenecks that often occur when moving data between storage devices and CPUs, resulting in markedly improved system performance and much higher energy efficiency.

The SmartSSD is playing an increasingly important role, especially with the growth of next-generation technologies such as AI, machine learning and 5G/6G, which require large amounts of data processing.

Leveraging software and intellectual property (IP) developed by customers, along with in-built Arm cores, Samsung’s second-generation SmartSSD enables much more efficient data processing. Compared to conventional data center solid-state drives, processing time for scan-heavy database queries can be slashed by over 50%, energy consumption by up to 70% and CPU utilization by up to 97%.

Since its development in 2020 through the joint efforts of Samsung and AMD, the first-generation SmartSSD is being supplied to global IT companies including video communications platform providers. The first-generation SmartSSD was recognized as an Innovation Awards Honoree at CES 2021 for its outstanding performance and energy efficiency.

“Commercialization of the first-generation SmartSSD, in collaboration with AMD, established that the computational storage market has great potential,” said Jin-Hyeok Choi, Executive Vice President and Head of Memory Solution Product & Development at Samsung Electronics. “With the upgraded processing functionality of the second-generation SmartSSD, Samsung will be able to easily address increasing customer needs in the database and video transcoding sectors, as we expand the boundaries of the next-generation storage market.”

“Powered by Xilinx Versal Adaptive SoCs from AMD, second-generation Samsung SmartSSDs enable improved CPU efficiency and greatly reduced energy consumption by efficiently integrating the computing and storage functions in data centers,” said Sina Soltani, Corporate Vice President of Sales, AECG, Data Center and Communication Group at AMD. “As data-intensive applications continue to grow, second-generation Samsung SmartSSDs will deliver the superior performance and efficiency required for this expanding market.”

Samsung Electronics is leading efforts to standardize SmartSSD technology through close collaboration with the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and with NVM Express, while seeking to expand the boundaries of SmartSSD devices through technological validation for a wide variety of applications.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, and Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced a broad collaboration on software technologies for next-generation memory solutions. The partnership will focus on the development and validation of open source software for existing and emerging memory and storage products, including NVMe SSDs; CXL memory; computational memory/storage (HBM-PIM, Smart SSDs) and fabrics — in building an expansive ecosystem for closely integrated memory hardware and software.

The exponential growth of data driven by AI, AR and the fast-approaching metaverse is bringing disruptive changes to memory designs, requiring more sophisticated software technologies that better link with the latest hardware advancements.

“Samsung and Red Hat will make a concerted effort to define and standardize memory software solutions that embrace evolving server and memory hardware, while building a more robust memory ecosystem,” said Yongcheol Bae, Executive Vice President and Head of the Memory Application Engineering Team at Samsung Electronics. “We will invite partners from across the IT industry to join us in expanding the software-hardware memory ecosystem to create greater customer value.”

“In the upcoming data-centric era, the integration of memory-centric hardware and software architectures will become increasingly essential, and for this purpose, Red Hat is happy to participate in the joint undertaking with Samsung,” added Marjet Andriesse, Senior Vice President and Head of Red Hat Asia Pacific.

The new partnership marks the first time that Samsung has joined forces with an open source software company to foster engagements across the IT marketplace. As an extension to this strategic collaboration, Samsung will launch the Samsung Memory Research Cloud (SMRC), where the two companies will develop and verify software solutions on diverse server environments.

Serving as an open collaboration hub, the SMRC will enable customers and partners to evaluate new software products in configuring optimal combinations with memory hardware.

The companies will also participate in open source communities such as the Linux Foundation, to ensure that their software technology has full support in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and with other open source software stacks.

Samsung plans to open its SMRC platform in the second half of this year and expects it to act as an ongoing catalyst for innovation in future IT systems.

“Creative professionals and consumers want durable, high-performance and reliable SSDs with the assurance their data will remain safeguarded, even when dropped, exposed to water or used outdoors,” said KyuYoung Lee, Vice President of Memory Brand Product Biz Team at Samsung Electronics. “The T7 Shield offers extensive compatibility, enabling consumers to use the new SSD on multiple devices including PC, android smartphone and game console.”

IP65-Rated Durability

The T7 Shield is Samsung’s most durable PSSD to date, making it ideal for outdoor content creators or travelers who need data-rich experience without having to worry about data loss from exposure to the elements or life’s mishaps. Carefully engineered by Samsung from the inside out, the T7 Shield is shock-resistant from drops of up to three meters,² while being IP65-certified as dustproof and water resistant.³ Despite the new rugged design, the T7 Shield is compact and lightweight, weighing a mere 98 grams.

Exceptional Performance

The T7 Shield delivers a read speed of 1,050 megabytes per second (MB/s) and a write speed of 1,000 MB/s,⁴ which are the fastest transfer speeds currently available based on the USB 3.2 Gen2 standard.⁵ It is approximately twice as fast as its predecessor, the T5, and up to 9.5 times faster than external hard disk drives (HDDs),⁶ saving consumers, digital creators and professionals valuable time.

Samsung has also optimized the inside and outside of the product, by changing the surface material and improving the software in the T7 Shield, to solve the performance degradation and overheating that occur when transferring large files. Due to this change, there is no performance degradation even when files of 2TB are moved at once, and heat generation is minimized, which help solve the inconvenience that consumers may experience. Through this, it is possible to transmit data stably without performance drop,⁷ even when performing data-heavy, continuous tasks such as high-quality video recording, editing, encoding and rendering. This alleviates concerns over inconsistent drive performance.

Wide Compatibility and Strong Security

Designed to work across multiple devices, Samsung’s T7 Shield can store large numbers of pictures, games as well as 4K and 8K videos whether on a PC, Mac, Smartphone (Android), or game console.⁸ Additionally, the T7 Shield has strengthened security (*256-bit AES, Advanced Encryption Standard) with hardware encryption so that consumer data can be safely protected even if the T7 shield is lost. Plus, it provides access to Samsung’s Magician Software⁹ which lets users to conveniently manage the drive.

Eco-Conscious Packaging

As with Samsung’s other portable SSD lineups, the T7 Shield uses one-third of the tray packaging compared to prior generations, while minimizing greenhouse gas emissions during its production through production efficiency.

Available in beige, black and blue to satisfy user preferences, the T7 Shield is offered in 1TB and 2TB sizes, making it suitable for a wide range of use cases. The drive comes with a USB Type-C-to-C cable and a USB Type-C-to-A cable, and includes a three-year limited warranty with the manufacturer’s suggested retail prices (MSRP) of $159.99 for the 1TB and $289.99 for the 2TB. The T7 Shield is available worldwide starting today. For more information, please visit https://samsung.com/portable-ssd.

Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield Product Specifications

¹ CES 2020 Innovation Awards honoree

² The drop test was conducted under controlled conditions. Drop resistance may vary depending on the actual environmental conditions. Damage caused by drop is not covered under warranty.
*Test condition: Device was dropped free-fall to a metal plate from 3-meter height.

³ IP (Ingress Protection) ratings define degrees of protection provided by mechanical casings and electrical enclosures against water and dust. T7 Shield has a IP65 rating based on internal testing conducted under controlled conditions. Water and dust resistance capabilities may vary depending on the actual environmental conditions. Damage caused by liquid and dust are not covered under warranty.
**IPX5 Test condition: Device was exposed to fresh water projected from a nozzle (Φ6.3mm) 3 meters away at 12.5 l/min for 3 minutes.
**IP6X Test condition: Device was exposed to 2kg/m³ of active dust with a pressure under 2kPa for 8 hours in a vacuum chamber.

⁴ Test system configuration: ASUS Z270 ROG MAXIMUS IX HERO (USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C), Intel (R) Core (TM) i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz, OS- Windows 10 19H2.

⁵ USB 3.2 Gen2 is the standard protocol offered on most consumer and pro model laptops. Throughput is limited due to device ports, not the SSD. Performance may vary depending on host configuration. To reach maximum read/write speeds of up to 1,050/1,000MB/s, respectively, the host device and connection cables must support USB 3.2 Gen2, and the UASP mode must be enabled.

⁶ Based on internal test results compared to a Samsung external HDD 1TB (HX-MTD10EA)

⁷ The T7 Shield maintains above 900MB/s of sequential write speed with the 1TB model and 1,000MB/s with the 2TB in ambient temperature (25℃).

⁸ Compatibility with host devices may vary. Some operating systems may require reformatting of the T7 Shield.
Please find the compatible devices list on https://samsung.com/samsungssd.

⁹ For further information, visit https://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/magician.

¹⁰ 1GB=1,000,000,000 bytes, 1TB=1,000,000,000,000 bytes. Lower capacity may be demonstrated by computers due to use of a different measurement standard.

¹¹ Exact weight of product may vary by capacity.

¹² Max data transfer speed is measured based on Samsung’s internal testing standards with the enclosed cable. Performance may vary depending on host configuration, cable and user system environment.

¹³ T7 Shield has a IP65 rating based on internal testing conducted under controlled conditions. Water and dust resistance capabilities may vary depending on the actual environmental conditions. Damage caused by liquid and dust are not covered under warranty.
*IPX5 Test condition: Device was exposed to fresh water projected from a nozzle (Φ6.3mm) 3 meters away at 12.5 l/min for 3 minutes.
**IP6X Test condition: Device was exposed to 2kg/m³ of active dust with a pressure under 2kPa for 8 hours in a vacuum chamber.

¹⁴ The drop test was conducted under controlled conditions. Drop resistance may vary depending on the actual environmental conditions. Damage caused by drop is not covered under warranty.

¹⁵ T7 Series Software’s minimum System Requirements: Windows 7 or higher, Mac OS X 10.10 or higher, Android Lollipop or higher.

¹⁶ Case Temperature is measured at the hottest point on the case. Sufficient airflow is recommended to be operated properly on heavier workload within device operating temperature.

¹⁷ Samsung Electronics shall not be liable for any loss, including but not limited to loss of data or other information contained in Samsung Electronics products and in storage devices, or loss of profit or revenue which may be incurred by user. For more information on warranty, please visit https://samsung.com/portable-ssd.

Since the PCIe 5.0 specification was first released in 2019, new server processors supporting the interface, along with peripheral devices, have been introduced to the market one after another. In response to that rapid growth, Samsung Electronics recently developed the PM1743 – a high-performance PCIe 5.0 SSD based on the company’s advanced sixth-generation V-NAND. The new device will help process vast amounts of data more quickly as the increasing popularity of AI services drives market demand for high-performance servers.

Ushering in a new generation of solid-state storage, the PCIe 5.0 SSD is twice as fast as PCIe 4.0 drives, offering a bandwidth of 32 gigatransfers per second (GT/s) and featuring an EDSFF (E3.S) form factor with a thickness of 7.5mm. This allows for easy server scalability, while its enhanced power efficiency and advanced security and reliability support greater speed and accuracy. Together, these elements have the potential to make life and work a little better for everyone.

Incorporating the PM1743 into high-performance server systems maximizes systems’ efficiency and enables superfast data processing. This will not only help save time, but also enable convenient solutions to enhance our personal and professional lives.

The video below highlights how the PM1743 works and how it can help make work and life more comfortable. In a nutshell, the new SSD supports the fast and accurate analysis of huge amounts of data across a variety of fields including everything from smart farms to healthcare and finance.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today unveiled its new enterprise solid-state drive (SSD) featuring Zoned Namespace (ZNS) technology — the PM1731a. Leveraging ZNS, the SSD will maximize available user capacity and offer an extended lifespan in storage server, data center and cloud environments.

“Samsung’s ZNS SSD reflects our commitment to introducing differentiated storage solutions that can substantially enhance the reliability and lifetime of server SSDs,” said Sangyeun Cho, senior vice president of the Memory Software Development Team at Samsung Electronics. “We plan to leverage quad-level cell (QLC) NAND technology in our next-generation ZNS drives to enable higher thresholds for storage performance and capacity in the enterprise systems of tomorrow.”

ZNS allows data to be grouped based on their usage and access frequency, and stored sequentially in independent zones within an SSD. Without the need to move and rearrange data, ZNS SSDs can significantly reduce the number of write operations, lowering the drive’s write amplification factor (WAF) — the amount of actual writes performed by the drive compared to writes initially instructed by the host system. The closer the WAF is to one, the more efficient the SSD and the longer it will last.

Based on ZNS, the new Samsung SSD can achieve a WAF close to one, a major improvement over typical server SSD values between three and four. This will make the drive last up to four times longer than conventional NVMe SSDs, making it a greener, more sustainable solution for server infrastructures. ZNS also allows users to take advantage of the SSD’s full capacity by eliminating the need for overprovisioning, which would have required reserving some storage space for background tasks. These improvements will enable enterprise customers to handle big data and artificial intelligence applications with much greater efficiency.

Built upon Samsung’s sixth-generation V-NAND, the 2.5-inch PM1731a will come in two terabyte (TB) and four TB models. The SSD will feature dual ports, ensuring the drive is fully accessible for continuous operations and minimizing downtime. This is essential for enterprises and public cloud companies who run mission-critical, data-intensive applications, and cannot afford any pause in the continuity of their businesses.

Samsung has been actively engaging in several open-source projects to help expand the ZNS ecosystem. The company will make its ZNS technology available to xNVMe, which provides software libraries and tools to improve the performance of NVMe devices. The company is also participating in the Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK) community created by Intel, enabling SPDK users to implement ZNS more easily.

Samsung plans to mass-produce ZNS SSDs in the second half of the year and continue working with global enterprise storage companies to optimize its ZNS drives across various customer environments.

163 zettabytes (ZB) is the amount of data expected to be generated worldwide by 2025, according to market research firm IDC. Within the span of just a decade, data produced by humankind will see a tenfold increase, which means we will see more data created in the next couple of years than has been accumulated over the past decades.

As more and more data is collected, we are able to access the information we want and enjoy high-quality content anytime, anywhere. Advancements in 5G, AI and 8K technologies, in particular, are further enriching people’s lives, resulting in the generation of a colossal amount of data on a daily basis.

Energy-Efficient DRAM and SSD

Most electronic data is stored in data centers which are often called “archives of human knowledge”. Data centers consist of a massive network of servers and are the epitome of cutting-edge information technology. The operation of data centers, naturally, requires a massive amount of electricity, and this is where the potential for the future of energy-efficient memory technology lies.

HDD or SSD is where data actually gets stored on servers. SSD is a NAND flash memory-based storage device and it delivers higher performance than disk-based HDD while using 50% less energy. With recent developments in technologies, DRAM needed for computing has also been optimized to perform better and consume less electricity.

Replacing HDDs with SSDs across all data center servers released in 2020 can be translated into saving 3 terawatt-hours (TWh) of energy per year. Upgrading server DRAM  from DDR4 to the new DDR5 has the effect of saving 1TWh. These power savings amount to 4TWh, which is large enough to light all the street lights in Korea for an entire year, or power all homes in the country for a month.

Furthermore, additional electricity is required to cool down the tens of thousands of servers hard at work. That is why many data centers are located in Finland, Sweden or Ireland, to give them access to the cooler air and sea water needed for cooling. The less energy used in data center operation by adopting more SSDs and DDR5, the less heat generated, which ultimately leads to less electricity being needed for the cooling process. A total of 3TWh of electricity can be saved per year by following this process. A combined energy saving of 7TWh is enough electricity to replace 2.5 coal-fired power plants. The growing demand for servers driven by rapid growth in data and continued semiconductor innovation are placing a heightened importance on energy-efficient memory solutions.

Our Vision for a Sustainable Future                                               

When the Paris Agreement was signed to fight climate change in 2015, an international environmental organization singled out electricity as the main culprit of global warming in its report, claiming that the energy sector is responsible for 72.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions. They urged the IT industry to join its efforts in reducing energy consumption given that energy consumption in data centers and networks was forecast to soar.

Samsung Electronics has long been aware of the value and potential of energy-efficient memory. Since it launched its “Green Memory Campaign” in 2009, it has been introducing memory solutions with maximized energy efficiency year after year as a part of its commitment to contribute to environmental protection.

In addition, our various sustainability initiatives across manufacturing processes and site operations have been recognized. Samsung Electronics became the first company in the semiconductor industry to earn a number of environmental certifications, including the Carbon Footprint and Water Footprint Certifications and the Zero Waste to Landfill Validation of Gold Level.

The path ahead for Samsung Memory is clear: to produce high-performing and energy-efficient products, and in turn, to empower all users to take part in saving the planet.

As a decades-long global IT leader, Samsung Electronics will continue to work for a more sustainable future as we explore new and innovative approaches to protect our planet.

“By bringing cutting-edge 3D memory technology to volume production, we are able to introduce timely memory lineups that significantly raise the bar for speed and power efficiency,” said Kye Hyun Kyung, executive vice president of Solution Product & Development at Samsung Electronics. “With faster development cycles for next-generation V-NAND products, we plan to rapidly expand the markets for our high-speed, high-capacity 512Gb V-NAND-based solutions.”

The Only Single-stack 3D Memory Die With a 100+ Layer Design

Samsung’s sixth-generation V-NAND features the industry’s fastest data transfer rate, capitalizing on the company’s distinct manufacturing edge that is taking 3D memory to new heights.

Utilizing Samsung’s unique ‘channel hole etching’ technology, the new V-NAND 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-optimized 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.

Thanks to this speed-optimized design, Samsung will be able to offer next-generation V-NAND solutions with over 300 layers simply by mounting three of the current stacks, without compromising chip performance or reliability.

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.

Following today’s introduction of the 250GB SSD, 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 (Korea) campus starting next year to better meet demand from global customers.

Reference: Samsung V-NAND Mass Production Timeline

To anyone out there who’s struggling to come to terms with their computer’s slow performance, Samsung Electronics has four simple words for you: it’s not your fault. Ageing hard disk drives (HDDs) have slowed so many of us down at the most inconvenient of times. We all have our stories. Fortunately, as the videos below show, Samsung has a solution.

Each tongue-in-cheek clip in Samsung’s “It’s not your fault” series opens on a group therapy session that’s unlike any other, but that so many of us can relate to. After sharing stories of how their sluggish PCs caused increasingly long boot times, crashed in the middle of a game (and erased all of their progress), and prevented a father from buying his daughter a birthday gift she’d never forget, the participants learn that it’s not their fault that their computer let them down, and that they can start the healing process by upgrading from an HDD to a Samsung solid-state drive (SSD).

When it comes down to it, most computer processing issues are caused by slow storage devices, which can limit the speeds of the fastest CPUs. Unlike HDDs, which feature internal parts that physically rotate in order to read and write data, SSDs feature no rotating parts – which makes them much more durable than HDDs – and store data on semiconductor chips that support much faster processing.

To offer HDD users insight into their computer’s health, Samsung has created a fun and simple questionnaire that allows you to find out whether your computer is stuck in the Jurassic or Middle Ages, or firmly in the SSD era. Head over to Samsung’s official PC Age Calculator to see how your computer stacks up.

Don’t forget to check out each of the hilarious (and all-too-relatable) clips above, and stay tuned to Samsung Newsroom for more fun “It’s not your fault” videos.

We’re speaking, of course, of solid state drives (SSDs). While it’s true that SSDs have been on consumers’ radars for quite some time, many have found large-capacity models to be a bit too expensive for their liking.

That is, until now. Samsung’s recent release of the multi-terabyte 860 QVO SSD has made cutting-edge speed and performance more accessible than ever. Let’s examine how the company’s latest innovative drive stacks up against conventional HDDs, and discover why it’s time for more consumers to adopt a true 21st-century storage solution.

Built for Reliability

One of the key differences between HDDs and SSDs boils down to design. HDDs rely on moving parts, which, over time, can make them slower and less reliable. This can eventually lead files to become scattered across the disk, further reducing the drive’s performance.

The 860 QVO, on the other hand, was built with Samsung’s high-density 4-bit multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash architecture, which features no moving parts to slow you down. This also allows the SSD to offer better durability than an HDD, with greater resistance to shocks.

The design differences between HDDs (above) and SSDs

Efficiency Is Everything

In addition to a durable, lightweight design, the 860 QVO offers users exceptional efficiency.

Compared to a conventional HDD, Samsung’s drive consumes less power, emits less heat, and runs noise and vibration free. And because it’s backed by Samsung’s industry-leading TBW rate, users can trust that the 860 QVO will keep their data more safe.

The Need for Speed

Now let’s talk speed. Featuring sequential read and write speeds of up to 550 megabytes per second (MB/s) and 520 MB/s, respectively, the 860 QVO offers approximately 60 percent faster boot speeds, makes unzipping files 110 percent faster, and allows you to copy files a whopping 250 percent faster than a conventional HDD.

Best of all, because the drive’s 2.5-inch form factor fits perfectly into most PCs and laptops, upgrading from an HDD to the 860 QVO – and turbocharging your computing experience – couldn’t be easier.

Making ‘Exceptional’ More Accessible

Before Samsung’s introduction of the 860 QVO, offering a multi-terabyte SSD that combined this level of speed and reliability, all at a price point comparable to an HDD, was virtually unheard of.

Affordability is just one of the many factors that make this drive a true game-changer. Check out the video above to learn more about why you should consider making the 860 QVO your first terabyte SSD.

Samsung Electronics, today unveiled its new consumer solid state drive (SSD) lineup — the Samsung 860 QVO SSD — featuring up to four terabytes (TB) of storage capacity with exceptional speed and reliability. Built on the company’s high-density 4-bit multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash architecture, the 860 QVO makes terabyte capacities more accessible to the masses at approachable price points.

“Today’s consumers are using, producing and storing more high-resolution files than ever, including 4K videos and graphics-intensive games, escalating demand for greater capacities and performance in storage devices,” said Dr. Mike Mang, vice president of Brand Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung continues to lead the move toward multi-terabyte SSDs with the introduction of the Samsung 860 QVO, delivering fast performance, reliability and value to more consumers around the world.”

Mainstream PC users handling large multi-media content often need to upgrade their PC’s storage to improve everyday computing experience. Based on the commonly used SATA interface and 2.5-inch form factor, the 860 QVO fits perfectly in most standard laptops or desktops. Also, by offering both high capacity and performance in a single, affordable drive, the 860 QVO eliminates the need to use a combination of an SSD and an HDD for booting and storage.

Featuring sequential read and write speeds of up to 550 megabytes per second (MB/s) and 520 MB/s, respectively¹, the 860 QVO achieves the same level of performance as today’s 3-bit MLC SSD, thanks to Samsung’s latest 4-bit V-NAND and the proven MJX controller. The drive is also integrated with Intelligent TurboWrite technology², which helps to accelerate speeds while maintaining high performance for longer periods of time.

For optimal reliability, Samsung provides a total byte written based on a thorough analysis of consumers’ SSD usage patterns: a three-year limited warranty³ or up to 1,440 terabytes written (TBW) for the 4TB version, and 720 TBW and 360 TBW for the 2TB and 1TB versions, respectively.

The 860 QVO will be available globally from December 2018, with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) starting at $149.99 for the 1TB model. For more information, please visit samsung.com/ssd or samsungssd.com.

Key Specifications

¹ Performances may vary depending on SSD’s firmware version and system hardware & configuration. The sequential write performances were measured with Intelligent TurboWrite technology being activated. The sequential write performances may not be sustained for the portion of data exceeding over Intelligent TurboWrite buffer size. Sequential performance measurements are based on CrystalDiskMark v. 5.0.2. Random performances are measured with Intelligent TurboWrite technology being activated. Random performances may not be sustained for the portion of data exceeding over Intelligent TurboWrite buffer size. Random performance measurements are based on IOmeter1.1.0.

* Test system configuration: Intel® Core i7-4790k CPU@4GHz, DDR3 1600MHz 8GB, OS-Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit, Chipset-ASUS-Z97-PRO

² The Intelligent TurboWrite technology adjusts the buffer size to optimal levels within the usable disk space; up to 42GB for 1TB model and up to 78GB for 2TB and 4TB models. For more information on TurboWrite, please visit www.samsungssd.com.

³ 3 years or TBW, whichever comes first. For more information on warranty, please find the enclosed warranty statement in the package

⁴ 1GB=1,000,000,000 bytes by IDEMA. A certain portion of capacity may be used for system file and maintenance use, so the actual capacity may differ from what is indicated on the product label.

⁵ Samsung Electronics shall not be liable for any loss, including but not limited to loss of data or other information contained on Samsung Electronics product or loss of profit or revenue which may be incurred by user. For more information on the warranty, please visit www.samsung.com/ssd.

On November 13, Samsung Newsroom spoke with the designers behind the X5—Teukmo Ahn, Hyungsup Shim, Yoorim Yang and Gyejin Jun, of Samsung Electronics’ Brand Product Marketing Group—who discussed the device’s unique design philosophy.

The X5’s curved front resembles the hood of a high-performance supercar. The contrast between the drive’s glossy top, which brings to mind a car’s exterior, and the red bottom, which symbolizes the speed of light, completes the impression

According to Designer Hyungsup Shim, the team decided early on to produce a design that embodied the exciting speeds that the X5 was introducing to the market.

“Transferring a three-gigabyte (GB) video in just two seconds had never been possible before,” said Shim. “We wanted to express, through its design, that this product is built to exceed conventional ‘speed limits’.”

With that idea in mind, Shim added, the decision to fashion the design after a cutting-edge supercar was a no-brainer. This decision also meant that the device’s form would represent a departure from traditional memory storage device designs, which tend to focus on making products as simple and small as possible in an effort to make them durable and portable. The X5’s eye-catching design challenges the traditional notions of simple and small, without sacrificing the durability and portability that users prize.

The designers continuously refined the SSD’s details, including its color, materials and shape, in order to achieve the exact design that they had in mind. They carefully shaped the lower half of the device with aerodynamic lines; treated the upper half to a UV coating that evokes the glossy exterior of a supercar; and even fashioned a unique emblem that resembles the type of sleek hood ornaments that are traditionally found perched above the vehicles’ powerful engines.

The Brand Product Marketing Group is responsible for designing Samsung’s consumer memory products, which includes SSDs, memory cards, and USB memory. (From right) Designers Hyungsup Shim and Gyejin Jun

The X5’s powerful engine enables market-leading transfer speeds. Such speeds could make a conventional portable SSD prone to excessive heating, but Samsung’s design team worked hard to find a solution to this problem.

Reflecting back on the design process, Shim discussed some of the difficulties that came with trying to resolve the heat issue while maintaining a compact form.

“The easiest way to reduce heat buildup would have been to make the device bigger, but we didn’t want to compromise the innovative design,” Shim explained. “We therefore went to great lengths to install a heat sink that absorbs heat and allows air to flow inside—all while maintaining a sleek silhouette.”

The team worked long and hard to identify an optimal size and shape. The result of these efforts is a device that remains cool under pressure, and is verified not to exceed 45 degrees Celsius when in use.

During an extensive development process that took nearly three times longer than usual, the design team produced more than 20 mock-ups (each of which featured five or six unique variations) before landing on the X5’s final form. Here you can see the progression from the SSD’s initial design (located on the top left), which roughly resembles a portable battery, to its final form (located on the bottom right). As you can see, the designs progressively become smaller, more streamlined, and more similar in appearance to a supercar

In addition to performance, the team highlighted durability and usability when hammering out the X5’s final design. For example, because portable storage devices are meant to be easy to carry, the design team carefully tapered the SSD’s form to ensure a comfortable grip, and applied a soft finishing to its lower half to prevent it from slipping out of users’ hands.

The drive’s exceptional durability stems from the team’s decision to fashion it out of a strong and lightweight magnesium alloy that enables it to withstand accidental drops of up to two meters.

As the designers explained, the decision to use magnesium instead of the more commonly used aluminum presented difficulties from a design standpoint, as magnesium is generally harder to finish. This meant that the team would have to finish the device by hand.

It can also be quite difficult to color magnesium. The team welcomed the challenge, however, applying layers upon layers of color until the device was just the right hue. Even the colors of the labels on the bottom of the drive were coordinated to accentuate the aesthetic.

As Designer Gyejin Jun explained, when it came to identifying innovative ways to incorporate ‘speed’ into aspects of the X5’s design, no detail was overlooked. “We challenged ourselves to come up with several new design features that would express the device’s unprecedented speed,” said Jun. “Nothing was easy.”

The result of these extensive efforts is a device that the design team is very proud of, which offers content creators and on-the-go professionals the portable storage solution they’ve been waiting for.

“I hope that the X5 will serve as the powerful engine that content creators need to do what they do best,” said Jun, before expressing his ambition to “come up with more innovative products and designs in the future.”

At first glance, Samsung’s recently unveiled Portable SSD X5 looks more like a model for a high-performance supercar than a portable solid state drive (SSD). That’s because the company’s first NVMe-based portable SSD features a captivating design to match its exceptional performance.

Like the supercars that inspired its form, the X5 was built for speed. Based on the cutting –edge Thunderbolt 3 technology, its industry-leading read and write speeds—up to 2,800 MB/s and 2,300 MB/s, respectively—support blazing fast transfers, enabling users to transmit three gigabytes’ worth of data in just two seconds.

Check out the video to see how the X5 fast-tracks file transfers.

Professional sports players are sensitive to even the slightest changes in their equipment. For gamers, establishing the most suitable environment for gameplay can be just as important as improving their skills. One of the most significant pieces of computer equipment is the Solid-state Drive, a key component that improves a computer’s performance and the smoothness of play.

One individual who appreciates the importance of hardware performance is Kyo Min “Evermore” Koo, a rising star in professional gaming and avid streamer. He was also amongst the winners in the recent Charity tournament at the PUBG Invitational 2018 in Berlin. To get a better understanding of the interplay between the game, the equipment and the gamer, the Newsroom invited Evermore to perform a brief experiment on Samsung’s fastest SSD to date, the NVMe SSD 970 EVO.

Samsung NVMe SSD 970 series and SATA SSD 860 series

An SSD is a type of data storage device, similar to a Hard Disk Drive (HDD). Currently the worldwide market share of HDD and SSD is 45% and 55%, respectively, but there are some key differences between the two devices. While an HDD stores and retrieves digital information using rotating disks coated with magnetic material, an SSD uses semiconductor flash memory to store data. This means an SSD is able to withstand greater amounts of shock and heat. The Samsung NVMe SSD 970 EVO boasts the fastest speed and highest reliability amongst SSDs, providing consumers the best conditions to perform HD and 3D graphic design tasks, play high spec games and create VR content.

Evermore tested out two desktop computers that had exactly the same systems – apart from their data storage drives. One was fitted with an HDD (1TB, SATA3, 7200rpm) and the other with an SSD (NVMe SSD 970 EVO, 250GB).

Installing an NVMe SSD 970 is quite simple. Insert the SSD in the M.2 slot. No additional cable is required. Remember to check in advance whether the M.2 slot of the mainboard supports the NVMe interface.

Recalling his past experiences, Evermore pointed to the tangible differences between the two types of data storage device: “My personal computer is equipped with the best of the best. One day I stopped by an Internet café that had computers with HDDs installed. I could really feel the difference. Just as I suspected, I was slower to start than my friends who were playing on different computers. There were also some delays during the battle. I had never lost to my friends before that day.”

The nature of open world games means that time is of the essence. “Everything happens in the blink of a moment when playing open world games,” Evermore explained. “The loading time of the textures on the map is crucial when playing games such as PUBG. Even when you spot your enemy before they spot you, if you react slowly because of the loading time, they will attack first and it can be hard to win.”

Evermore playing PUBG on Samsung CJ89 – 49” supersize monitor

During battle royale games, multiple players all interact with each other across a vast battlefield, which means that a large amount of data is processed very quickly. A highly advanced SSD can significantly affect the match result.

During the experiment, Evermore could feel this immediately: “When playing the game, the computer reads and writes the data from the storage drive repeatedly, so it is important for the storage to have a high performance. While playing today on the computer installed with an HDD, I felt the same delay I experienced at the Internet café, whereas the computer with the NVMe SSD 970 EVO showed no such issues.”

Measuring the data processing speed for each computer. The speed of the computer equipped with an SSD 970 EVO (right) is more than twenty times faster than that of the computer with an HDD (left).

When playing a game which requires high specs, the computer’s fan can be very loud as it rotates to cool down the heat that the computer components are generating inside the case.

The power consumption can also soar when playing games for a long period of time, as Evermore revealed: “I spend any spare time I have playing games. However, the computer heats up when I use it for several hours.”

An SSD consumes less power than an HDD since the booting, loading and data processing speeds are swifter and it emits less heat.

To Evermore, the contrast is significant: “I can definitely tell the difference between an HDD and SSD. Since large data processing is essential when playing open world games, they automatically consume more power. Of course, the CPU or storage drives heat up once you’ve been playing a high spec game for some time. The SSD 970 EVO, in that sense, is fascinating because it has a high level of performance but doesn’t heat up that much. I heard this is because of its high power efficiency.”

The NVMe SSD 970 EVO also has a Dynamic Thermal Guard function that safeguards against overheating by automatically monitoring and maintaining optimal operating temperatures. With high power efficiency optimized for high spec computing systems, gameplay can continue for many hours.

The increasing popularity of game streaming platforms has led more and more professional gamers to create their own streaming channels, and Evermore is no exception.

Evermore enjoys interacting with his fans on various streaming channels, including Twitch and Kakao TV

“Streaming is the easiest way to communicate with my fans,” he remarked. “In order to record and talk to my fans at the same time, I definitely need a high spec computer.”

Streamers will edit and upload highlight films, or live stream while playing games and communicating with their fans. Since everything is happening simultaneously, this process requires strong multitasking skills from both the gamer and the computer. The Samsung NVMe SSD 970 EVO minimizes buffering and other issues when multitasking, so that gamers can record their games and voice-chat with other players at the same time.

Evermore preparing to start streaming after the SSD 970 EVO has been installed on the computer

Evermore outlines the potential pitfalls and solutions: “During live streaming, there can be buffering when you run several programs at the same time. Sometimes, your voice does not sync with the video if you don’t have an adequate computer system. Using an advanced SSD like the 970 EVO eases the burden on the CPU and the graphics.”

With lightning fast speeds, superior power efficiency and the ability to perform multiple tasks simultaneously, the SSD 970 EVO is a data storage drive ideal for a wide range of high spec games and tasks.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing the industry’s first 4-bit (QLC, quad-level cell) 4-terabyte (TB) SATA solid-state drive (SSD) for consumers.

Based on 1-terabit (Tb) V-NAND with outstanding performance equivalent to the company’s 3-bit design, Samsung’s QLC SSD is expected to bring a new level of efficiency to consumer SSDs.

“Samsung’s new 4-bit SATA SSD will herald a massive move to terabyte-SSDs for consumers,” said Jaesoo Han, executive vice president of memory sales & marketing at Samsung Electronics. “As we expand our lineup across consumer segments and to the enterprise, 4-bit terabyte-SSD products will rapidly spread throughout the entire market.”

With its new 1Tb 4-bit V-NAND chip, Samsung will be able to efficiently produce a 128GB memory card for smartphones that will lead the charge toward higher capacities for high-performance memory storage.

Typically, as data stored within a memory cell increases from three bits to four, the chip capacity per unit area would rise and the electrical charge (used to determine information from a sensor) would decrease by as much as 50 percent, making it considerably more difficult to maintain a device’s desired performance and speed.

However, Samsung’s 4-bit 4TB QLC SATA SSD maintains its performance levels at the same level as a 3-bit SSD, by using a 3-bit SSD controller and TurboWrite technology, while increasing drive capacity through the use of 32 chips, all based on 64-layer fourth-generation 1Tb V-NAND.*

The 4-bit QLC SSD enables a sequential read speed of 540 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 520 MB/s, and comes with a three-year warranty.

Samsung plans to introduce several 4-bit consumer SSDs later this year with 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities in the widely used 2.5-inch form factor.

Since introducing the 32-gigabyte (GB) 1-bit SSD in 2006, which ushered in the PC SSD era, to today’s 4TB 4-bit SSD, Samsung continues to drive new thresholds for each multi-bit generation.**

In addition, the company expects to provide M.2 NVMe SSDs for the enterprise this year and begin mass production of 4-bit fifth-generation V-NAND. This will considerably expand its SSD lineup to meet the growing demand for faster, more reliable performance across a wide span of applications, such as next generation data centers, enterprise servers, and enterprise storage.

*1Tb (128GB) x 32 = 4TB (4,096GB)

**Samsung’s mass production history of SSDs in bits per cell

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it is being recognized for its environmental reliability by receiving the industry’s first Environmental Product Declaration^* (EPD) certificate in Korea with its 512Gb 64-layer 3bit V-NAND and 860 EVO 4TB SSD.

The Environmental Product Declaration is a national certification system in Korea which recognizes a product’s performance according to seven key environmental metrics including carbon footprint, resource footprint, ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical smog, and water footprint.

In terms of per capacity (gigabit), the carbon emission of the 512Gb 3-bit V-NAND has been reduced to less than half of that of the 10-nanometer (nm)-class 64Gb V-NAND that was certified last year.

An 8TB SSD composed with the 512Gb V-NAND can reduce approximately 240kg CO2 of carbon emission per year compared to a 8TB SSD product composed with the 64Gb NAND, producing the same effect as planting twenty-five 30-year-old trees^**.

“The EPD certification will serve as an assurance to our customers that Samsung’s high-capacity products offer not only cutting-edge technology, but also certified environmental reliability” said Mike Mang, Vice President of Brand Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung plans to begin mass production of 1Tb V-NAND in the future to lead the growth of the rapidly expanding ultrahigh-capacity storage market and strengthen its eco-friendly technology leadership.”

Samsung Electronics seeks to leverage its advancements in environmental reliability to lead the consumer market by exceeding customer expectations, just as it has continuously delivered in high performance and energy efficiency in the corporate SSD market.

Samsung earned its first low carbon footprint certification for the DDR3 DRAM server module in 2009 and had since expanded its environmental certification portfolio across its key products, including NAND flash, LPDDR, SSD, and application processors.

[Table] Carbon Footprint Comparison

^* The EPD certification is developed in accordance with the International Standards ISO 14000s (14025, 14044, 14046). The certification is managed by the Korean Ministry of Environment and operated by the Korea Environmental Industry & Technology Institute.

^** The amount of carbon absorbed by an average 30-year-old tree in a year is 9.36 kg CO2.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has launched the industry’s highest capacity NVMe solid state drive (SSD) based on the incredibly small Next-generation Small Form Factor (NGSFF)* – an eight-terabyte (TB) NF1** SSD. The new 8TB NVMe NF1 SSD has been optimized for data-intensive analytics and virtualization applications in next-generation data centers and enterprise server systems.

“By introducing the first NF1 NVMe SSD, Samsung is taking the investment efficiency in data centers to new heights,” said Sewon Chun, senior vice president of Memory Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “We will continue to lead the trend toward enabling ultra-high density data centers and enterprise systems by delivering storage solutions with unparalleled performance and density levels.”

The new SSD is built with 16 of Samsung’s 512-gigabyte (GB) NAND packages, each stacked in 16 layers of 256 gigabit (Gb) 3-bit V-NAND chips, achieving an 8TB density in an ultra-small footprint of 11cm x 3.05cm. This is twice the capacity offered by the M.2 NVMe SSD (11cm x 2.2cm) commonly used in hyper-scale server designs and ultra-slim laptops. The NF1 SSD is expected to quickly and easily replace conventional 2.5-inch NVMe SSDs by enabling up to three times the system density in existing server infrastructure, allowing for an unprecedented 576TB of storage space in the latest 2U rack servers.

The NF1 SSD features a brand new, high-performance controller that supports the NVMe 1.3 protocol and PCIe 4.0 interface, delivering sequential read speeds of 3,100 megabytes per second (MB/s) and write speeds of 2,000MB/s. These speeds are more than five times and three times that of a typical SATA SSD, respectively. Random speeds come in at 500,000 IOPS for read operations and 50,000 IOPS for writes. Utilizing the new NF1 storage solution, an enterprise server system can perform over one million IOPS in a 2U rack space, significantly enhancing the return on investment for next-generation large-scale data centers. The SSD also includes a 12GB LPDDR4 DRAM to enable faster and more energy-efficient data processing.

To ensure long-term data reliability, the NF1 NVMe SSD has been designed with an endurance level of 1.3 drive write per day (DWPD), which guarantees writing an entire 8TB of data 1.3 times a day over its three-year warranty period.

Samsung plans to accompany its 256Gb 3-bit V-NAND-based SSD with a 512Gb version in the second half of this year to accommodate even faster processing for big data applications, while also accelerating the growth in next-generation enterprise and mid-market data centers.

* Next-generation Small Form Factor (NGSFF) is the latest SSD standard which is expected to be standardized by JEDEC in October. It succeeds the M.2 standard and can more than double the space utilization within server systems.

** NGSFF is also referred to as NF1.

Samsung Electronics, today introduced the Samsung 970 PRO and EVO, the third generation of its industry-leading consumer solid state drive (SSD) lineup. Having led the market with the first consumer-focused NVMe SSD in 2015, Samsung continues to push the performance barriers with this latest generation of SSDs that are built for tech enthusiasts and professionals so that they can enjoy higher bandwidth for intensive workloads on PCs and workstations.

“Samsung has led the NVMe SSD industry since its inception, and the company continues to define the latest standards of consumer storage with unprecedented performance of the 970 PRO and EVO SSDs,” said Un-Soo Kim, senior vice president of Brand Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “The 970 series sets a new bar in all aspects for the NVMe SSD market with groundbreaking performance, superior reliability and best-in-class capacity.”

The Samsung 970 PRO and EVO are designed based on the M.2 form factor standard and with the latest PCIe Gen 3×4 lane interface. The 970 series maximizes the potential of NVMe bandwidth, delivering unparalleled performance for processing large volumes of data, including 3D, 4K graphics work, high-end games and data analytics.

The 970 PRO enables sequential read speed of up to 3,500 MB/s and sequential write speed of up to 2,700 MB/s¹, while the EVO features sequential read speed of up to 3,500 MB/s and sequential write speed of up to 2,500 MB/s². The sequential write speeds represent an enhancement of up to 30 percent over the previous generation³, thanks to Samsung’s latest V-NAND technology and the newly designed Phoenix controller. The 970 EVO, in particular, utilizes the Intelligent TurboWrite technology, which uses a large buffer size of up to 78GB⁴ to enable faster write speeds.

In addition to the advancements in performance levels, the 970 PRO and EVO deliver exceptional endurance and reliability. Featuring a five-year warranty⁵, or up to 1,200 terabytes written⁶ – 50 percent higher than those provided for the previous generation⁷ – the 970 PRO and EVO are built to last. The Dynamic Thermal Guard technology safeguards against overheating by automatically monitoring and maintaining optimal operating temperatures, while a heat spreader and new nickel-coated controller further lower the SSD temperatures.

The 970 PRO and EVO also provide greater system design flexibility for the high-performance computing systems. Offering a variety of high capacity options in a compact M.2 form factor – including the single-sided 2TB EVO model – the 970 series enables convenient storage expansion across a wide range of computing devices.

The 970 EVO will be offered in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB⁸ capacities, and the 970 PRO in 512GB and 1TB capacities. The 970 PRO and EVO will be available for purchase worldwide starting May 7, 2018, with manufacturer’s suggested retail prices starting at $329.99 and $119.99 USD, respectively. For more information, including warranty details, please visit www.samsung.com/SSD, www.samsungssd.com.

Key Specifications

* Five years or TBW, whichever comes first

¹ 970 PRO and EVO performance may vary based on SSD’s firmware version, system hardware and configuration. Performance measurements based on IOmeter 1.1.0. *Test system configuration: Intel Core i7-7700K CPU @4.2GHz, DDR4 2400MHz 32GB, OS-Windows 10 Built 10240, Chipset–ASUS PRIME Z270-A.

² Performance may vary based on SSD’s firmware version, system hardware and configuration. Performance measurements based on IOmeter 1.1.0.
Write performance measurements are based on Intelligent TurboWrite technology.
The sequential write performances after TurboWrite region are: 300 MB/s(250GB), 600 MB/s(500GB), 1,200 MB/s(1TB) and 1,250 MB/s(2TB).
The random write performances after TurboWrite region are: 80,000 IOPS(250GB), 160,000 IOPS(500GB) and 300,000 IOPS(1TB/2TB).
* Test system configuration: Intel Core i7-7700K CPU @4.2GHz, DDR4 2400MHz 32GB, OS-Windows 10 Built 10240, Chipset–ASUS PRIME Z270-A.

³ Up to 29% and 32% in sequential write speeds, respectively, have increased when compared to Samsung 960 PRO and EVO.

⁴ 970 EVO Intelligent TurboWrite buffer size varies based on the capacity of the SSD: 13GB for 250GB model, 22GB for 500GB model, 42GB for 1TB model and 78GB for 2TB model. For more information on the TurboWrite, please visit www.samsungssd.com.

⁵ Five years or TBW, whichever comes first. For more information on the warranty, please find the enclosed warranty document in the package.

⁶ Warrantied TBW(Total byte written) for 970 PRO: 600TB for 512GB model, 1,200TB for 1TB model; Warrantied TBW(Total byte written) for 970 EVO: 150TB for 250GB model, 300TB for 500GB model, 600TB for 1TB model, 1,200TB for 2TB.

⁷ 50% increase when compared to Samsung 960 PRO and EVO.

⁸ 1GB=1,000,000,000 bytes by IDEMA. A certain portion of capacity may be used for system file and maintenance use, so the actual capacity may differ from what is indicated on the product label.

The speed of the Samsung 970 PRO and EVO SSD that unlocks a new level of computing performance is unveiled in the video. The new line of SSDs can completely transform how tech enthusiasts and professionals think about computing, forming a vital piece of the puzzle to making the best of high-performance computing system.

For high performance PC users looking to process large volumes of data for 3D and 4K graphics work, high end games, or data analytics, the 970 series sets a new standard. The new SSDs have improved write speeds that are up to 30 percent in sequential write speeds, 50 percent in random write speeds better than the previous generation, thanks to Samsung’s latest V-NAND technology and the newly designed Phoenix controller. The NVMe interface allows for industry-leading performance and sequential read/write speeds up to 3500MB/s, 2700MB/s . With the new 970 PRO and EVO, Samsung has once again set a precedent for consumer-focused NVMe SSDs – a market the company has led since its inception in 2015.

Check out how the 970 PRO and EVO make all the difference in this video below.

This NVMe SSD 970 video is a continuation of the previous generation’s launch video, which portrayed the SSD 960 pioneering new possibilities in outer space. Check out the Samsung NVMe SSD 960 video here.

The 970 series maximizes the potential of NVMe bandwidth. The 970 PRO enables sequential read speed of up to 3,500 MB/s and sequential write speed of up to 2,700 MB/s, which means it can read a five-gigabyte (GB) movie in a mere second and write in 1.9 seconds.

Check out the infographic on NVMe SSD 970, which provides exactly what power-users are looking for in an SSD.

This breakthrough was made possible by combining 32 of the new 1TB NAND flash packages, each comprised of 16 stacked layers of 512Gb V-NAND chips. These super-dense 1TB packages allow for approximately 5,700 5-gigabyte (GB), full HD movie files to be stored within a mere 2.5-inch storage device.

In addition to the doubled capacity, performance levels have risen significantly and are nearly twice that of Samsung’s previous generation high-capacity SAS SSD. Based on a 12Gb/s SAS interface, the new PM1643 drive features random read and write speeds of up to 400,000 IOPS and 50,000 IOPS, and sequential read and write speeds of up to 2,100MB/s and 1,700 MB/s, respectively. These represent approximately four times the random read performance and three times the sequential read performance of a typical 2.5-inch SATA SSD*.

“With our launch of the 30.72TB SSD, we are once again shattering the enterprise storage capacity barrier, and in the process, opening up new horizons for ultra-high capacity storage systems worldwide,” said Jaesoo Han, executive vice president, Memory Sales & Marketing Team at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung will continue to move aggressively in meeting the shifting demand toward SSDs over 10TB and at the same time, accelerating adoption of our trail-blazing storage solutions in a new age of enterprise systems.”

Samsung reached the new capacity and performance enhancements through several technology progressions in the design of its controller, DRAM packaging and associated software. Included in these advancements is a highly efficient controller architecture that integrates nine controllers from the previous high-capacity SSD lineup into a single package, enabling a greater amount of space within the SSD to be used for storage. The PM1643 drive also applies Through Silicon Via (TSV) technology to interconnect 8Gb DDR4 chips, creating 10 4GB TSV DRAM packages, totaling 40GB of DRAM. This marks the first time that TSV-applied DRAM has been used in an SSD.

Complementing the SSD’s hardware ingenuity is enhanced software that supports metadata protection as well as data retention and recovery from sudden power failures, and an error correction code (ECC) algorithm to ensure high reliability and minimal storage maintenance. Furthermore, the SSD provides a robust endurance level of one full drive write per day (DWPD), which translates into writing 30.72TB of data every day over the five-year warranty period without failure. The PM1643 also offers a mean time between failures (MTBF) of two million hours.

Samsung started manufacturing initial quantities of the 30.72TB SSDs in January and plans to expand the lineup later this year – with 15.36TB, 7.68TB, 3.84TB, 1.92TB, 960GB and 800GB versions – to further drive the growth of all-flash-arrays and accelerate the transition from hard disk drives (HDDs) to SSDs in the enterprise market. The wide range of models and much improved performance will be pivotal in meeting the growing storage needs in a host of market segments, including the government, financial services, healthcare, education, oil & gas, pharmaceutical, social media, business services, retail and communications sectors.

* Compared to 2.5-inch Samsung SSD 850 EVO

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has launched an 800-gigabyte (GB) solid state storage drive—the SZ985 Z-SSD, for the most advanced enterprise applications including supercomputing for AI analysis.

Developed in 2017, the new 800GB Z-SSD provides the most efficient storage solution for high-speed cache data and log data processing, as well as other enterprise storage applications that are being designed to meet rapidly growing demand within the AI, big data and IoT markets.

“With our leading-edge 800GB Z-SSD, we expect to contribute significantly to market introductions of next-generation supercomputing systems in the near future, enabling improved IT investment efficiency and exceptional performance,” said Jinman Han, senior vice president, Memory Product Planning & Application Engineering at Samsung Electronics. “We will continue to develop next-generation Z-SSDs with higher density and greater product competitiveness, in order to lead the industry in accelerating growth of the premium SSD* market.”

The new single port, four-lane Z-SSD features Z-NAND chips that provide 10 times higher cell read performance than 3-bit V-NAND chips, along with 1.5GB LPDDR4 DRAM and a high performance controller. Armed with some of the industry’s most advanced components, the 800GB Z-SSD features 1.7 times faster random read performance at 750K IOPS, and five times less write latency – at 16 microseconds, compared to an NVMe SSD PM963, which is based on 3-bit V-NAND chips. The Z-SSD also delivers a random write speed of up to170K IOPS.

Due to its high reliability, the 800GB Z-SSD guarantees up to 30 drive writes per day (DWPD) for five years, or a total of 42 petabytes. That translates into storing a total of about 8.4 million 5GB-equivalent full-HD movies during a five-year period. The reliability of the new Z-SSD is further underscored by a mean time between failures (MTBF) of two million hours.

Samsung will introduce its new Z-SSD in 800GB and 240GB versions, as well as related technologies at ISSCC 2018 (International Solid-State Circuits Conference), which will be held February 11-15 in San Francisco.

Note: All brand, product, service names and logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners and are hereby recognized and acknowledged. Z-SSD is a trademark of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

* Editor’s Note: The premium SSD means an SSD with IOPs exceeding 550K for random reads, and latency lower than 20us.

The newest additions to the world’s best-selling SSD series* have been engineered with Samsung’s latest V-NAND technology to handle everything from everyday computing to heavy workloads with ease, offering users the perfect combination of speed, endurance and compatibility. Check out the SSD robots’ epic training montage in the video below.

*Sources: NPD (US data from Jan. 2015 to Oct. 2017) and GfK (EU5 data from Jan. 2015 to Sep. 2017, China data from Jan. 2016 to Sep. 2017)

Samsung Electronics today introduced the 860 PRO and 860 EVO solid state drives (SSDs), the most up-to-date additions to the company’s SATA interface lineup. The products are aimed at consumers who require fast, reliable performance across various applications, from everyday computing to heavy workloads and graphic-intensive operations. Building on the successful launch of the 850 PRO and 850 EVO – the industry’s first consumer SSDs with V-NAND technology – the 860 PRO and 860 EVO achieve industry-leading performance for SATA SSDs, offering enhancements in speed, reliability, compatibility and capacity.

“The new 860 PRO and 860 EVO SSDs combine the latest 512Gb and 256Gb 64-layer V-NAND, up to 4GB LPDDR4 mobile DRAM and a new MJX controller to elevate the user experience for both consumers and businesses,” said Un-Soo Kim, senior vice president of Brand Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung will continue to fuel meaningful innovations in the consumer SSD space and drive growth of the overall memory industry for years to come.”

As file sizes continue to increase with high-resolution photos and 4K videos, the need for faster data transfers and sustainable high performance over a longer period of time has become paramount for users. To address this need, Samsung’s 860 PRO and 860 EVO support up to 560 MB/s read and 530 MB/s write¹ speeds and offer unmatched reliability with an upgraded five-year limited warranty², or up to 4,800 terabytes written (TBW)³ for the 860 PRO and up to 2,400 TBW⁴ for the 860 EVO. The new MJX controller also enables faster communication with the host system. The controller is powerful enough to handle workstation storage, while improving Linux operating system compatibility.

The 860 PRO are available in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB⁵ capacities, with the 4TB memory storage holding up to 114 hours and 30 minutes of 4K Ultra HD video. The 860 PRO is available in a widely compatible 2.5-inch form factor, which is ideal for PCs, laptops, workstations and NAS.

The 860 EVO come in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB⁶ capacities, in a 2.5-inch for PCs and laptops, as well as mSATA and M.2 form factors for ultra-slim computing applications. The 860 EVO has up to six times longer sustained performance than its predecessor due to enhanced Intelligent TurboWrite⁷ technology, with read and write speeds of up to 550 MB/s and 520 MB/s⁸, respectively.

The 860 PRO and 860 EVO SSDs are available from this month with manufacturer’s suggested retail prices starting at $139.99 and $94.99 USD, respectively. For more information, please visit www.samsung.com/SSD, www.samsungssd.com.

Key Specifications

¹ Performance may vary based on SSD’s firmware version, system hardware and configuration. Performance measurements based on CrystalDiskMark v.5.0.2 and IOmeter 1.1.0. *Test system configuration: Intel Core i5-3550 CPU @ 3.3 GHz, DDR3 1333 MHz 4GB, OS – Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Chipset: ASUS P8H77-V

² Five years or TBW, whichever comes first. For more information on the warranty, please find the enclosed warranty document in the package.

^{3, 4} Warrantied TBW for 860 PRO: 300 TBW for 256GB model, 600 TBW for 512GB model, 1,200 TBW for 1TB model, 2,400 TBW for 2TB model and 4,800 TBW for 4TB model.

Warrantied TBW for 860 EVO: 150 TBW for 250GB model, 300 TBW for 500GB model, 600 TBW for 1TB model, 1,200 TBW for 2TB model and 2,400 TBW for 4TB model.

^{5, 6} 1GB=1,000,000,000 bytes by IDEMA. A certain portion of capacity may be used for system file and maintenance use, so the actual capacity may differ from what is indicated on the product label.

⁷ The TurboWrite buffer size varies based on the capacity of the SSD; 12GB for 250GB model, 22GB for 500GB model, 42GB for 1TB model and 78GB for 2/4TB. For more information on the TurboWrite, please visit www.samsungssd.com.

⁸ Performance may vary based on SSD’s firmware version, system hardware & configuration. Sequential write performance measurements are based on Intelligent TurboWrite technology. Performance measurements based on CrystalDiskMark v.5.0.2 and IOmeter 1.1.0. The sequential write performances after Intelligent TurboWrite region are 300 MB/s for 250/500GB and 500 MB/s for 1TB.

⁹ Terabytes Written

Under the slogan, “Leading the way, shaping the future,” Samsung offered insight on the latest global trends within the industry as well as the company’s vision and strategy for India’s dynamic mobile landscape.

The mobile ecosystem in India has been experiencing unprecedented development within the past few years and market demand for value-added products has increased sharply. Through its second SMSF India event, Samsung continues to recognize the opportunities that India brings and the potential the market holds.

“India is witnessing an extraordinary digital communication revolution with growth prospects never seen before, and Samsung is thrilled to catalyze this change by providing total technology solutions to our customers,” said Haejin Park, Vice President and Head of Device Solutions in Southeast Asia, Samsung Electronics. “We are very proud of where we are today and excited about where we are headed.”

Samsung’s branded image sensor ISOCELL® was highlighted at the event with demos for its technological sub-brands—Bright, Fast, Slim and Dual—that meet diverse needs of cameras for today’s mobile applications. The brand is named after the company’s own image sensor technology that allows high color fidelity and excellent image quality even with smaller pixels. Samsung’s advanced semiconductor solutions also on display included near field communication (NFC) mobile payment solution, touch controller supporting force home key feature, LPDDR4-based mobile DRAM, and T5 portable solid state drive (SSD).

Following its first components forum in India, the Samsung Image Sensor Forum (2015), Samsung reinforced its presence the next year through the Samsung Mobile Solutions Forum India, presenting a comprehensive lineup of its leading mobile component solutions.

More than 200 industry professionals ranging from mobile manufacturers and OEM (original equipment manufacturer) companies, to design engineers and researchers for mobile devices and technologies attended the forum.

Samsung Electronics rewrote the book on digital data storage with the introduction of its next chapter: V-NAND technology. As outlined in the video above, this revolutionary new paradigm in memory semiconductors doubles processing speeds and halves power consumption in solid-state drives (SSDs) — currently used in a wide range of applications, from client PCs to enterprise servers.

Prior to V-NAND technology’s introduction, SSD memory had traditionally been increased by cramming more cells into a limited 2D plane. Because placing the cells too closely together can ultimately compromise reliability, this new approach instead stacks them three-dimensionally. To illustrate, imagine a building, where instead of cramming more rooms into the fixed space of a single floor, you increase capacity by building new levels. This construction alleviates issues associated with shrinking NAND lithography and makes it possible for enterprises to adopt SSDs with faster response rates and larger capacities.

With the layered innovation, Samsung has added new depth to memory semiconductor technology. This will not only accelerate developments in cloud computing, real-time analysis and big data networks, but also advance the era of IoT, wherein immense amounts of data will need to be processed and transferred faster than ever before.

Samsung Electronics, a worldwide leader in advanced memory solutions for more than two decades, today unveiled the Samsung 960 PRO and 960 EVO, its newest solid state drives (SSDs). The V-NAND based, M.2 form factor SSDs were built on the company’s category-defining Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) SSD leadership. With powerful performance, endurance and capacity topped with all new and more robust Samsung Magician software package, Samsung continues to accelerate the NVMe era.

Packed with more technology and innovation than ever, the 960 PRO and 960 EVO are designed for users who seek smaller and faster storage solutions that deliver higher bandwidth and lower latency for processing massive amounts of data for everything from gaming and large file transfers to 4K video rendering, data analytics and more on their ultra-thin notebooks and PCs.

Both the 960 PRO and 960 EVO use the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) Gen.3 x4 lane interface and are compliant with NVMe specifications to realize effective use of the high-speed PCIe bus and optimize both hardware and software configurations to take advantage of the NVMe SSD technology. The SSDs feature Samsung Dynamic Thermal Guard technology to manage performance during extreme workloads.

“For more than 30 years, Samsung has continued to push the boundaries of what is possible to deliver innovative consumer memory experiences.” said Un-Soo Kim, Senior Vice President of Branded Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “Our V-NAND technology for NVMe-based storage products is our most recent advancement in the NVMe era.”

The 960 PRO and 960 EVO SSDs redefine the personal computer performance, in part attributed to new controller which raises the bar of consumer SSD performance. The 960 PRO delivers peak sequential read and write transfer speeds of 3,500 MB/s and 2,100 MB/s, respectively, and random read and write IOPS of up to 440,000 and 360,000.¹

On top of being the world’s fastest M.2 NVMe- SSD, the 960 PRO will also offer 2 terabyte (TB) capacity, which is the highest capacity commercially available for M.2 NVMe SSDs, along with 512GB and 1TB versions.² The 960 PRO’s high density was made possible by Samsung V-NAND technology and the uniquely restructured package design. As user capacity demand trends continue to rise, the high-density 960 PRO capacities are poised to conveniently meet the needs of personal data and information storage. The 960 PRO promises additional reliability and endurance with the five-year limited warranty and up to 1.2 petabytes written (PBW), whichever occurs first, for the 2TB capacity.

“We were proud to erect the NVMe era last year with the introduction of our 950 PRO SSD. Now, with the introduction of the NVMe 960 PRO and 960 EVO SSDs, Samsung is once again taking the next step in the multi-terabyte SSD technology and the storage revolution, providing users higher capacities and speeds than ever before within an NVMe PCIe drive to create new possibilities for consumers and business professionals,” Kim added.

The 960 EVO is available in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities³ and provide users with next-generation personal computing performance. The new Samsung Intelligent TurboWrite technology makes its debut in the 960 EVO and accelerates sequential read and write speeds, that reach peaks of 3,200 MB/s and 1,900 MB/s respectively.^4,5   The 960 EVO’s random read speed reaches up to 380,000 IOPS and random write speed up to 360,000 IOPS.⁶ The 960 EVO comes with a three-year limited warranty and up to 400 terabytes written (TBW), whichever occurs first, for the 1TB capacity version.

In addition to the industry leading performance, capacity and the reliable warranty-backed experience the 960 SSDs offer, Samsung is also introducing the all-new and fully rebuilt Magician software with a new user interface with which users can control various SSD settings including firmware updates.

The 960 PRO and 960 EVO SSDs will be available worldwide starting October 2016, with manufacturer’s suggested retail prices starting at $329.99 and $129.99 USD respectively. For more information, including warranty details⁷, please visit www.samsungssd.com.

^1,4,6 Sequential performance measurements based on CrystalDiskMark 5.0.2/IOmeter 1.1.0 and random performance measurements based on IOmeter 1.1.0.Performance may vary based on the SSD`s firmware version, system hardware and configuration. Test system configuration: Intel® Core i7-6700K CPU@4.0 GHz,DDR4 1700MHz 16GB,OS-Window 10 Pro x64,Chipset-ASROCK Z170 EXTREME 7.

^2,3 1GB=1,000,000,000 bytes by IDEMA. A certain portion of capacity may be used for system file and maintenance use, so the actual capacity may differ from what is indicated on the product label.

⁵ Sequential Write performance measurements are based on Intelligent TurboWrite technology. The sequential write performances after Intelligent TurboWrite region are 300 MB/s(250GB),600 MB/s(500GB) and 1200 MB/s(1TB).

⁷ Samsung’s warranty does not cover any costs and expenses relating to SSDs’ overhaul/assembly and data recovery for repairs or replacements.

The VMware Cloud Foundation-based rack was built using six Dell R730XD servers, each configured with two Samsung PM1725 NVMe solid state drives (SSDs) as the caching tier and six Samsung PM863 SATA SSDs as the capacity tier. The prototype spans successful imaging and bring-up of the integrated system rack, creation of a workload domain, and deployment of applications within the workload-domain-hosted VMware vSphere® cluster.

“VMware Cloud Foundation is based on VMware Virtual SAN 6.2 with support for all-flash storage and greater data efficiency,” said Raj Yavatkar, VMware fellow, chief architect for VMware Cloud Foundation, VMware. “Our collaboration with Samsung, to combine VSAN with Samsung NVMe SSDs, in VMware Cloud Foundation, brings low latency flash to mainstream applications and makes flash affordable to business-critical applications.”

“Through our strong ongoing strategic relationship with VMware, we are providing the best of both worlds for IT managers by allowing them to quickly build and deploy public and private clouds using the VMware Cloud Foundation combined with our NVMe SSDs,” said Michael Williams, Vice President, Memory Product Planning, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.  “Samsung NVMe SSDs deliver a new level of performance for VMware Cloud Foundation-based systems that is simply not attainable with SAS or SATA SSDs.”

Selected for the caching tier, the PM1725 SSD allows enterprise scale-up storage systems to fully utilize the low latency and extremely high efficiency of the NVMe interface. Based on Samsung’s 3-bit MLC V-NAND technology and the NVMe 1.2 standard, the PM1725 features a native PCIe Gen-3 x8 interface, allowing a single drive to deliver up to one million random read IOPS and 140K random write IOPS, as well as reading sequentially at up to 6GB/s and writing sequentially at 1.9GB/s. The PM1725 can also provide five DWPDs (drive writes per day) of write endurance for five years, allowing it to support write-intensive enterprise caching applications, as well as read-intensive primary storage.

For the capacity tier, Samsung’s PM863 is the industry’s most flexible family of SATA SSDs for servers and storage systems.  The PM863 is available in a wide range of capacities, from 120GB to 3.84TB in a 2.5” 7mm-thick form factor.  PM863 SSDs are powered by Samsung 3-bit MLC V-NAND technology, which ushered in a new era of cost-effective, all-flash, read-intensive storage for SATA-based data centers.

VMware Cloud Foundation brings together the power of vSphere, VirtualSAN, NSX and SDDC Manager into a natively integrated stack that makes it extremely easy to deploy and operate an SDDC, according to VMware. It includes automated installation, configuration and deployment of the virtual infrastructure stack. The automation allows customers to instantiate a cloud instance either as an on-premises private cloud or as a per-tenant cloud instance in a public cloud. It also can reduce the TCO through simplified and automated infrastructure lifecycle management, including day-to-day operations and upgrade/update management.

To find more information about the VMware Cloud Foundation solution and Samsung’s collaborative role, visit www.vmware.com/products/cloud-foundation

At Flash Memory Summit 2016*, held in the Santa Clara (CA) Convention Center, Samsung showcased its 4^th generation Vertical NAND (V-NAND) and a line-up of high-performance, high-capacity solid state drives (SSDs) available for its enterprise customers as well as Z-SSD, a new solution providing breakthrough performance for flash-based storage.

Samsung’s new flash storage devices are expected to contribute significantly to the global IT industry in meeting the growing storage requirements of today’s enterprise computing environment. These solutions will accommodate enormous amounts of data, and extremely high-speed information processing, while enhancing the total cost of ownership (TCO) for data centers.

“With our 4^th generation V-NAND technology, we can provide leading-edge differentiated values in high capacity, high performance and compact product dimensions, which together will contribute to our customers achieving better TCO results,” said Young-Hyun Jun, President of the Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “We will continue to introduce more advanced V-NAND solutions and expand our flash business initiatives in maximizing an unbeatable combination of performance and value.”

Samsung’s 4^th Generation V-NAND Stacks 30 Percent More Layers of Cell-Arrays than its Predecessor

Samsung introduced its 4th generation, 64-layer triple-level-cell V-NAND flash memory that pushes the envelope of NAND scaling, performance and storage capacity. Stacking 64 layers of cell-arrays, the new V-NAND can increase its single-die density to an industry-leading 512Gb and its IO speed to 800Mbps, which further distinguishes Samsung’s technology leadership in three-dimensional NAND cell structure design and production. Starting in August 2013, Samsung has previously introduced three generations of “industry-first” V-NAND products with 24, 32 and 48-layer vertical cell-array stacking technologies.

Samsung plans to provide the world’s first 4^th generation V-NAND flash memory products in the fourth quarter of this year, which will help manufacturers to produce faster, more stylish and portable computing devices, while offering consumers a more responsive computing environment.

World Largest Capacity Drive − 32TB SAS SSD − for Enterprise Storage Systems

Samsung’s latest Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) SSD is the world largest single drive ever introduced to the industry based on 512-gigabit (Gb) V-NAND chips. A total of 512 V-NAND chips are stacked in 16 layers to form a 1-terabyte (TB) package and the 32-terabyte (TB) SSD contains 32 of those packages.

By adopting a new 4^th generation V-NAND design, the 32TB SAS SSD can reduce system space requirements up to 40 times compared with the same type of system using two racks of hard disk drives (HDDs). The 32TB SAS SSD will come in a 2-5-inch form factor and be produced in 2017. Samsung also expects that SSDs with more than 100TB of storage capacity will be available by 2020, thanks to continued refinement of V-NAND technology.

1TB Memory in a Single BGA Package

The Samsung 1TB BGA SSD features an extremely compact, ball grid array (BGA) package design that contains all essential SSD components including triple-level-cell V-NAND flash chips, LPDDR4 mobile DRAM and a state-of-the-art Samsung controller.

It will deliver unprecedented performance, reading sequentially at 1,500MB/s and writing sequentially at 900MB/s. By reducing its size up to 50 percent compared to its predecessor, the SSD weighs only about one gram (less than half the weight of a U.S. dime), making it ideal for ultra-compact next generation notebooks, tablets and convertibles.

Next year, Samsung plans to launch its 1TB BGA SSD by adopting a high-density packaging technology called “FO-PLP (Fan-out Panel Level Packaging)” which Samsung Electronics developed with Samsung Electro-Mechanics.

New ‘Z- SSD’ Breaks through Performance Limits of Current NAND Flash Memory Storage

Samsung has also developed a high performance, ultra-low latency SSD solution, the Z-SSD. Samsung’s Z-SSD shares the fundamental structure of V-NAND and has a unique circuit design and controller that can maximize performance, with four times faster latency and 1.6 times better sequential reading than the Samsung PM963 NVMe** SSD.

The Z-SSD will be used in systems that deal with extremely intensive real-time analysis as well as extending high performance to all types of workloads. It is expected to be released next year.

* Flash Memory Summit (FMS), produced by Conference ConCepts, showcases the mainstream applications, key technologies, and leading vendors that are driving the multi-billion dollar non-volatile memory and SSD markets. FMS is now the world’s largest event featuring the trends, innovations, and influencers driving the adoption of flash memory in demanding enterprise storage applications, as well as in smartphones, tablets, and mobile and embedded systems. For more information, please visit at www.flashmemorysummit.com/

** Often shortened as NVMe, NVM Express (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is an optimized, high performance, scalable host controller interface with a streamlined register interface and command set designed for enterprise and client systems that use PCIe SSDs. For more information, please visit www.nvmexpress.org

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.

How was this possible? Samsung engineers talk about how they overcame many challenges to create this amazing new SSD, and how the drive will impact the future of electronic devices, in this fascinating video.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced today that it has begun mass producing the industry’s first NVMe* PCIe solid state drive (SSD) in a single ball grid array (BGA) package, for use in next-generation PCs and ultra-slim notebook PCs. The new BGA NVMe SSD, named PM971-NVMe, features an extremely compact package that contains all essential SSD components including NAND flash memory, DRAM and controller while delivering outstanding performance.

“Samsung’s new BGA NVMe SSD triples the performance of a typical SATA SSD, in the smallest form factor available, with storage capacity reaching up to 512GB,” said Jung-bae Lee, senior vice president, Memory Product Planning & Application Engineering Team, Samsung Electronics. “The introduction of this small-scale SSD will help global PC companies to make timely launches of slimmer, more stylish computing devices, while offering consumers a more satisfactory computing environment.”

Configuring the PM971-NVMe SSD in a single BGA package was enabled by combining 16 of Samsung’s 48-layer 256-gigabit (Gb) V-NAND flash chips, one 20-nanometer 4Gb LPDDR4 mobile DRAM chip and a high-performance Samsung controller. The new SSD is 20mm x 16mm x 1.5mm and weighs only about one gram (an American dime by comparison weighs 2.3 grams). The single-package SSD’s volume is approximately a hundredth of a 2.5” SSD or HDD, and its surface area is about a fifth of an M.2 SSD, allowing much more design flexibility for computing device manufacturers.

In addition, the PM971-NVMe SSD delivers a level of performance that easily surpasses the speed limit of a SATA 6Gb/s interface. It enables sequential read and write speeds of up to 1,500MB/s (megabytes per second) and 900MB/s respectively, when TurboWrite** technology is used. The performance figures can be directly compared to transferring a 5GB-equivalent, Full-HD movie in about 3 seconds or downloading it in about 6 seconds. It also boasts random read and write IOPS (input output operations per second) of up to 190K and 150K respectively, to easily handle high-speed operations. A hard drive, by contrast, will only process up to 120 IOPS in random reads, making the new Samsung SSD more than 1500 times faster than an HDD in this regard.

The PM971-NVMe SSD line-up will be available in 512GB, 256GB and 128GB storage options. Samsung will start providing the new SSDs to its customers this month worldwide.

As a leading SSD provider, Samsung has a history of introducing advanced SSDs ahead of the industry. In June 2013, Samsung introduced XP941 SSD in M.2 (mini PCI-Express 2.0) form factor (80mm x 22mm), which was also the industry’s first PCIe SSD for PCs. Now, Samsung plans to rapidly expand its market base in the next-generation premium notebook PC sector with the new high-performance, BGA package, NVMe SSD. Later this year, Samsung plans to introduce more high-capacity and ultra-fast NVMe SSDs to meet increasing customer needs for improved performance and greater density.

* Often shortened as NVMe, NVM Express (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is an optimized, high performance, scalable host controller interface with a streamlined register interface and command set designed for enterprise, datacenter and client systems that use non-volatile memory storage. For more information, please visit www.nvmexpress.org

** TurboWrite is a Samsung proprietary technology that temporarily uses certain portions of an SSD as a write buffer. TurboWrite delivers better PC experiences as users can enjoy much faster sequential write speeds.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., an expert provider of advanced memory solutions for more than three decades, today announced worldwide availability of the 750 EVO solid state drive (SSD) in 120GB, 250GB and an all new 500GB capacity. The 750 EVO SSDs provide mainstream consumers and PC builders with an efficient migration path from hard disk drives (HDDs) or slow performing entry-level SSDs to a faster and more reliable storage solution for every day computer use.

“Samsung is committed to constantly evolving and providing high-quality memory solutions that fit general consumer needs,” said Un-Soo Kim, Senior Vice President of Branded Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “We have seen high consumer demand for our 750 EVO in the 120GB and 250GB capacities, which have been available in select emerging markets since last year. We want to meet the consumers’ expectation who seek a reliable memory solution to extend the longevity of their existing computers in an easy and effective way. By adding the 500GB version to the current 750 EVO line-up and supplying the drives to more regions, consumers who need high data consumption will be better served.”

Extending Samsung’s heritage of offering cutting-edge memory solutions, the 750 EVO SSDs leverage Samsung’s advanced NAND flash technology and are packed with the company’s proprietary TurboWrite, Dynamic Thermal Guard protection and RAPID Mode features that together contribute to their high performance. Also equipped with Samsung’s powerful MGX controller, the 750 EVO SSDs provide sequential read and write speeds of up to 540MB/s and 520MB/s respectively, when TurboWrite is used.

The 750 EVO line-up is an ideal PC upgrade option that will turbo-charge users’ computing and multi-tasking needs at their home, school and office.  With Samsung Data Migration and Magician software, upgrading to the 750 EVO from existing storage device is quick and easy. The SSD also features reliable AES 256-bit hardware encryption to ensure stored data remain safe and secure. Unlike an HDD, the 750 EVO SSD has no moving parts, so consumers do not need to worry about the wear and tear on moving parts that can result in lost or corrupted data.

Samsung will offer the new 750 EVO 500GB to consumers with a three-year limited warranty or 100 terabytes written (TBW) in more than 50 countries and areas, including the USA, Europe, China, Korea, and other regions starting in early June. The 750 EVO 500GB’s MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price) is $149.99. For more information, please visit www.samsung.com/SSD.

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.

Samsung Electronics announced the Samsung Portable SSD T3, a premium, palm-sized, external solid state drive (SSD) that offers multi-terabyte (TB) storage capacity. Equipped with Samsung’s proprietary Vertical NAND (V-NAND) and SSD TurboWrite technology, the T3 drive provides advanced performance, enabling consumers, content creators, business and IT professionals, to quickly and easily store and transfer large multimedia content across a variety of devices.

“Following the successful worldwide launch of the Portable SSD T1 in 2015, we made several significant upgrades to the T3 based on the feedback and needs of our customers, which included content creators and business professionals in particular,” said Un-Soo Kim, Senior Vice President of Brand Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “As such, the T3 delivers the outstanding performance, storage capacity and durability needed from an external storage device for today’s mobile lifestyle, without compromising on style or security. It’s the new portable external storage drive users can depend on in any situation or environment.”

Representing a major step forward for external, mobile storage, SSDs offer a truly dependable and versatile solution. Samsung is leading the market by offering a new 2TB T3 SSD, along with a wide range of capacity options including 250 gigabyte (GB), 500GB, and 1TB. Recently chosen as an honoree for the 2016 CES Innovation Awards, in the Wireless Handset Accessories category, the new T3 drive will be on display at Samsung Electronics’ booth (#11906) during CES 2016. The booth will be in the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, from January 6 to 9.

External Storage with a New Level of Performance

With the rise of rich 4K content, consumers are increasingly relying on external storage solutions, while seeking faster data transfer speeds and large capacity on multiple devices. The T3 solves these concerns by enabling blazing-fast file transfers based on sequential read and write speeds of up to 450MB/s with a USB 3.1 interface, which is up to four times faster than alternative external HDD solutions*.

Mobility and Durability Suited for an On-the-Go Lifestyle

Designed specifically for today’s mobile lifestyle, the Portable SSD T3 is compact, lightweight and durable. The drive is smaller than an average business card and weighs a mere 50 grams approximately (less than two ounces), allowing users to easily carry large amounts of data with them anywhere.

Unlike an external HDD, the SSDs do not have moving parts and so the T3 is inherently better protected from damage or data loss due to bumps or drops. Featuring a new shock-resistant metal case and internal frame, the T3 can withstand up to 1500G of force and will survive a drop of up to two meters. The drive’s integrated Thermal Guard prevents overheating in extreme temperatures, and the T3 comes with a three-year limited warranty.

Increased Compatibility and Data Security

Featuring an adopted USB 3.1 Type C connection, the T3 is compatible with a wide range of USB supported devices, including the latest Android smartphones and tablets, and computers with Windows or Mac OS. Users can send data from the T3 to a PC and vice versa, access content on the T3 through mobile devices, and view the drive’s multimedia content on large-screen devices such as TVs. The T3 uses exFAT, a widely adopted file system, as its default file recognition format to create a seamless user experience. The T3 also works with a brand-new complementary Samsung Portable SSD Android mobile app which supports password changes and remaining capacity checks.

The drive has a simple set-up process for users, with one user-set password. The drive is equipped with AES 256-bit hardware encryption for the high level of security and protection across Windows, Mac and Android OS based devices. Even if the drive should fall into the wrong hands, the data stored on it would be inaccessible.

The Samsung Portable SSD T3 will be first launched in February, 2016 in countries including the United States, China, Korea and select European countries and will subsequently become available worldwide.

For more information, please visit www.samsung.com/T3.

Key Specifications

* Based on internal testing using a 500GB external HDD.
** Actual usable capacity may vary based on system settings. 1GB=1,000,000,000 bytes, 1TB=1,000,000,000,000 bytes.
*** The exact weight of the product may vary depending on each capacity model.
**** Performance may vary depending on host configuration and user system environment.

For more information about CES 2016, please visit our exclusive page #SAMSUNGxCES2016

Samsung Electronics, a global leader and award-winning innovator in consumer electronics, semiconductors and telecommunications, today announced that it won 38 prestigious International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016 Innovation Awards. The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the producer of CES 2016 – the global gathering place for all who thrive on the business of consumer technologies, who has been recognizing achievements in product design and engineering since 1976, has honored Samsung with one more Best of Innovation Award this year than last year.

Among Samsung’s 38 CES 2016 Innovation Awards are three Best of Innovation Awards. Products entered in the CES Innovation program are judged by a pre-eminent panel of independent industrial designers, engineers and members of the trade media to honor outstanding design and engineering in cutting-edge consumer electronics products across 27 categories.

“Samsung continues to deliver unique experiences for our consumers worldwide through the many products that help people lead more connected lives,” said Gregory Lee, president and CEO of Samsung Electronics North America. “We are honored that CTA and the industry recognizes our ongoing commitment to innovation and excellence in consumer experience as we look forward to demonstrating our latest achievements at the 2016 International Consumer Electronics Show.”

Samsung’s award-winning products span 18 categories including, TV, Monitor, Mobile, Tablet, Digital Imaging, Wearable, Home Appliance and Memory. Many of Samsung’s award-winning products will be on display at CES 2016, which runs January 6-9, 2016, in Samsung booth #11906 in the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Some of the winning products will be showcased at Samsung’s CES press conference, scheduled for 2 p.m. on Tuesday January 5, 2016.

Following are details on some of Samsung’s award-winning products:

Samsung Gear S2 – A completely re-designed smartwatch that centers on an intuitive circular design with a rotating bezel that allows users to easily and precisely navigate the UI with the turn of a dial. The Gear S2 provides at-a-glance notifications to check calendars, e-mails, send texts and more.

Galaxy S6 edge+ – With an immersive, 5.7-inch dual-edge display, the Galaxy S6 edge+ breaks conventional smartphone design and delivers industry leading features, including Samsung’s most advanced camera for high quality photos and videos, fast wireless and wired charging, powerful processor and Samsung Pay.

Samsung Galaxy View – Re-imagining mobile entertainment, the Galaxy View provides a movable, touchable, immersive TV experience. With a unique, video-centric user interface, the Galaxy View makes it easy to access and enjoy streaming content, interactive video games, books and other digital content.

Samsung Gear VR – Powered by Oculus, the Gear VR is compatible the Samsung Galaxy Note5, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge, leveraging each device’s Quad HD Super AMOLED display to provide the color, clarity and performance needed for an amazing virtual reality experience.

ATIV Book 9 Pro – Offering a stunning 4K display, cutting-edge performance from its Intel Core i7® processor, and magnificent quad speakers, this laptop is ideal for professionals and multimedia enthusiasts alike.

Samsung 950 PRO 512GB – This solid state drive (SSD), the first Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) M.2 form factor SSD with vertical NAND (V-NAND) technology, is designed to meet the demands of high-performance consumer and business PCs and laptops. Ideal for projects such as computer-aided design, data analysis and engineering simulation, the 950 PRO provides users with cutting-edge performance, higher bandwidth and lower latency from their workstations, even under intensive workloads.

Samsung 850 PRO 2TB – As the world’s first 2 terabyte consumer SSD, the Samsung 850 PRO 2TB is a high-performance, high-density storage device that delivers rapid data access times and program load times, as well as industry-leading power efficiency. With V-NAND technology at its core, the 850 PRO 2TB yields excellent reliability and superior performance throughout its lifetime.

Samsung SleepSense Sleep Monitor – The Bluetooth and IoT-enabled Samsung SleepSense device uses a complex set of sensors in a smart, innovative, and simple way to track and provide information on your sleep habits and deliver personalized expert tips directly to consumers’ smartphones to help you take control of the most important aspects of health and wellness: how well we sleep.

Samsung 128GB UFS – As the first mobile memory based on the much-anticipated Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.0 standard, this ultra-fast package is the highest capacity, highest performing, thinnest and smallest embedded storage memory for mobile devices. It allows for quick access to pictures from 20MP+ cameras and to 4K video files, as well as embracing 5G connectivity and delivering shorter application loading and response times.

Samsung 12Gb LPDDR4 – The world’s highest density mobile DRAM chip allows for packages of up to 6GB, delivering 34.1GB/s bandwidth – three times as fast as the industry’s previous highest performing mobile DRAM. The chip can accommodate the real-time multitasking scenarios of today’s flagship smartphones and tablets having UHD displays, while providing 50% greater power efficiency and the optimal density for new high-end 64bit-system smartphones.

Samsung Electronics unveiled big advancements in consumer solid state drives (SSD) on Tuesday, Sept. 22, led by the groundbreaking 950 PRO SSD at the 4th Samsung SSD Global Summit in Seoul.

Under the theme of “Marching Into the Next Era”, Samsung’s memory experts emphasized how SSD performance is at a “turning point,” both in terms of its technical possibilities and consumer adoption.

Un-Soo Kim, Senior Vice President of Brand Product Marketing Team of Memory Business, emphasized Samsung’s focus remains on consumers in his welcoming speech. “Consumers want capacity, performance and value. Consumers stand at center of everything we do.”

Doh Young Jeong, manager of Brand Product Marketing Team, said that “For the first time, customer surveys indicate the biggest issue with SSDs is no longer cost, but capacity and performance.” Global NAND flash memory market will reach up to 84 billion GB for this year — which translates to more than 336 million 256GB drives —and will go up to 253 billion GB by 2020, signaling growing presence of memory storage and SSDs in our daily life.

In preparation for these massive market demand jumps, Samsung’s memory technology is opening the door for consumers and businesses to experience enterprise quality memory storage performance. With Samsung’s cutting-edge stackable and scalable V-NAND technology we can likely expect consumer-ready several-terabyte (TB) SSDs are just around the corner.

The big emphasis for the summit was on the 950 PRO. The 950 PRO SSD promises unprecedented increased in speed and efficiency thanks to its Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) protocol and Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) 3.0 interface. It’s also the first branded SSD from Samsung to combine NVMe and V-NAND technology.

The drive comes in a compact M.2 2280 form factor, making it ideal for laptops and mobile platforms that support the M.2 PCIe slot.

“Only recent have the pieces come together for the consumer market,” said Jeong, calling the new developments in BIOS, CPU and OS support a “break from the past.”

While speeds and capabilities of computing environments and communication technologies continue to grow exponentially—wireless communication, mobile networks, external connectors, etc.—memory devices based on SATA is becoming a bottleneck factor, with legacy technology and protocols limiting progress.

The 950 PRO SSD now is capable of bypassing the legacy technologies and promises significant speed, performance and reliability improvements. Until the 950 PRO, SSDs relied on using Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) interfaces and Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) protocol. But the 950 PRO offers up to four times faster sequential read/write speeds and much higher random IOPS (input/output operations per second) than even the latest SATA SSDs.

The 950 PRO currently uses 2nd generation V-NAND and is available in 256GB and 512 GB, with planned expansion to 1TB early next year. The 512GB version of the 950 PRO can perform sequential read and write speeds of up to 2,500 MB/s and 1,500 MB/s respectively, and has random read performance up to 300,000 IOPS.

Ryan Smith, Director of NAND Product Marketing Group at Samsung Semiconductor Inc., then took to the stage to talk about how these technological leaps will affect the big picture in our lives. Combined with faster connectors, these new SSDs can reduce transferring 10GB of data on a SATA based hard disk drive from 6-10 minutes to just 10 seconds on a 950 PRO, or 16GB of photos from 177 seconds on a hard disk drive to just 10 seconds.

Faster also means more battery life, Smith noted, explaining how an NVMe SSD is able to finish the same amount of work much quicker and then saves its power when in idle mode, therefore consuming approximately 95 percent less power.

Smith also accentuated how these advancements will soon mean really big changes in datacenters and in enterprise, as well as with the Internet of Things. He explained how NVMe SSD solutions are becoming even more essential as datacenters deal with 4K video streaming and optimization using NVMe RAIDs. He also talked about several non-traditional uses for SSDs, such as virtual reality, crime prevention, remote surgery and traffic management. “SATA’s been holding us back,” he said. Better, faster, more efficient memory means a huge increase in the amount of data that can be stored and analyzed. Thanks to PCIe and NVMe, he said “Think about what industries we’re going to disrupt next.”

Samsung Electronics announced the introduction of the Samsung 950 PRO solid state drive (SSD), designed to meet the demands of high-performance consumer and business laptops and PCs. The drive’s M.2 form factor means that users with ultra-slim notebook PCs and workstations can benefit from industry-leading storage endurance, reliability and energy efficiency.

The Samsung 950 PRO SSD is Samsung’s first consumer-ready Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe*) M.2 form factor SSD with vertical NAND (V-NAND) technology; supporting the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) 3.0 interface. With the introduction of NVMe, the first protocol optimized for SSDs, users of the Samsung 950 PRO will benefit from improved performance and power saving which can help increase battery life and potentially reduce operating costs. The drive is ideal for professionals who want cutting-edge performance, higher bandwidth and lower latency from their high-end PCs and workstations, for projects such as computer-aided design, data analysis and engineering simulation. The compact M.2 2280 form factor ensures compatibility with next-generation desktop and mobile platforms that support the M.2 PCIe slot and interface.

“With the introduction of the 950 PRO using NVMe and PCIe, Samsung is able to provide our customers with the memory needed to handle the increased storage demands of tomorrow’s computing systems,” said Un-Soo Kim, Senior Vice President of Branded Memory, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “Consumers and businesses alike can experience enterprise-quality performance and benefits such as speed, endurance and energy efficiency to support the most demanding applications. The 950 PRO is yet another example of a branded memory solution that continues to elevate our portfolio of products and reflects Samsung’s continued leadership in the memory industry.”

Featuring the PCIe Gen.3 x4 interface and supporting the NVMe protocol, the Samsung 950 PRO offers improved random and sequential performance over Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) interface drives utilizing the legacy Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) protocol. Users of applications that benefit from high input/output operations per second (IOPS) will experience up to four times faster performance than with traditional SATA SSDs.

The 950 PRO will be available in 512 gigabyte (GB) and 256GB storage capacities. The 512GB version delivers sequential read/write speeds of up to 2,500 MB/s and 1,500 MB/s. Random read performance is up to 300,000 IOPS, with write speeds of up to 110,000 IOPS. It features Samsung’s second generation MLC V-NAND 32-layer 128Gb die with UBX controller and magician software.

The drive was built to last, with AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption to protect data and Dynamic Thermal Guard, which can protect the device and data in inclement weather from 0 to 70 degrees Celsius. It can also withstand physical shock of up to 1500G/0.5ms and vibrations up to 20G.

Both capacities come with a 5-year limited warranty up to 200 terabytes written (TBW) for the 256GB and 400TBW for the 512GB. The 950 PRO will be available beginning in October 2015, with an MSRP of $199.99 for the 256GB capacity and $349.99 for the 512GB capacity. For more information, please visit www.samsung.com/950PRO.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced that it has started mass production of the industry’s first NVMe PCIe solid state drive (SSD) which has an M.2 form factor for use in PCs and workstations. Samsung is also the first in the industry to announce that it has begun shipping NVMe SSDs to OEMs for the PC market. The new SM951-NVMe features the industry’s most advanced performance figures, exceptionally low power use in standby mode and the most compact size of any NVMe SSD.

“Our new NVMe SSD will allow for faster, ultra-slim notebook PCs with extended battery use, while accelerating the adoption of NVMe SSDs within the consumer marketplace,” said Jeeho Baek, Senior Vice President of Memory Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung will continue to stay a critical step ahead of others in the industry in introducing a diversity of next-generation SSDs, that contribute to an enhanced user experience through rapid popularization of ultra-fast, highly energy-efficient, compact SSDs.”

Samsung has been offering an AHCI-based PCIe 3.0 version of its SM951 SSD since early January. Now, it has added an NVMe version to form an even stronger SSD portfolio. This follows a previous industry-first introduction of 2.5” NVMe SSDs for the server market in 2013.

The new NVMe-based SM951 SSD achieves sequential data read and write performance up to 2,260 megabytes per second (MB/s) and 1,600MB/s, respectively, while using Samsung’s leading-edge controller technology. These performance figures are the industry’s most advanced, with speeds four and three times faster than those of a typical SATA-based M.2 SSD which usually moves data at up to 540MB/s and 500MB/s, respectively.

The drive attains its high-speeds by using four 8 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) lanes (PCIe Gen 3.0 x4) of simultaneous data flow. This allows for a data transfer rate of 32Gbps and a maximum throughput of 4GB/s, giving the new drive a huge advantage over SATA-based M.2 SSDs, which can only transfer data up to 600MB/s.

When it comes to random read operations, the SM951-NVMe can process 300,000 IOPS (Input Output Per Second), which is more than twice as fast as the 130,000 IOPS rate of its AHCI-based equivalent and more than three times faster than the 97,000 IOPS of a SATA-based SSD.

Meeting all M.2 form factor requirements, the drive’s thickness does not exceed 4 millimeters, (3.73 millimeters maximum, when equipping chips on both sides of the board). This is less than the thickness of two stacked nickels. The drive also weighs less than 7 grams, which is lighter than two nickels and only a tenth the weight of a 2.5” SSD. Capacities are 512 gigabyte (GB), 256GB and 128GB.

In addition, the SM951-NVMe has adopted the L1.2 low-power standby mode (which allows all high-speed circuits to be turned off when a PC is on sleeping mode or in hibernation), as defined by PCI-SIG, the PCIe standards body. By embracing the L1.2 level of standby operation, the SM951’s power consumption is drastically reduced – to under 2mW, representing about a 97 percent decrease from the 50mW consumed using an L1 state, which is the most widely used low-power mode today.

In the future, Samsung plans to incorporate its next-generation 3D V-NAND technology into its NVMe SSD line-ups, which will enable even higher densities and performance. Samsung also will maintain a fast-to-market supply of advanced SSDs to meet increasing customer demand, as the company continues to lead the premium SSD market and aggressively innovates to expand the mainstream SSD segment.