“With continuing innovations in gaming, 4K and 8K technology as well as AI-driven applications, consumers’ need for high-performance storage is growing exponentially,” said KyuYoung Lee, Vice President of the Memory Brand Product Biz Team at Samsung Electronics. “The 990 PRO provides an optimal balance of speed, power efficiency and reliability, making it an ideal choice for avid gamers and creative professionals seeking uninterrupted work and play.”

Extreme Performance for an Immersive Gameplay Experience

Featuring Samsung’s latest V-NAND and a new proprietary controller, the 990 PRO series offers the highest speed currently available from the PCIe 4.0 interface.[1]The SSD delivers sequential read and write speeds of up to 7,450 megabytes per second (MB/s) and 6,900 MB/s, respectively, while random read and write speeds come in at up to 1,400K and 1,550K IOPS,[2]respectively. With up to a 55% improvement in random performance over the 980 PRO, the 990 PRO is particularly well-suited for heavy gaming as well as creative and productivity tasks.

High-performance NVMe SSDs are also critical in reaping the full benefits of the latest game console and gaming technologies. Powered by NVMe, the 990 PRO brings faster loading times to PCs and consoles for a more immersive gaming experience. When tested with Forspoken,[3]Luminous Productions’ forthcoming action role-playing game supporting the latest game-loading technology, the map loading time was about one second, compared to four seconds for a SATA SSD and 28 seconds for a hard disk drive (HDD).

Ultimate Power Efficiency and Reliable Thermal Control

Built on a low-power architecture, Samsung’s newly designed controller dramatically improves the SSD’s power efficiency by up to 50% compared to the 980 PRO.[4]Additionally, the 990 PRO employs a nickel coating on the controller and a heat spreader label on the drive for reliable thermal management. Samsung’s Dynamic Thermal Guard technology further ensures that the drive’s temperature stays in the optimal range.

The 990 PRO with Heatsink version offers an additional layer of thermal control while its RGB lights add more style to the drive.

Samsung’s 990 PRO is also an excellent solution for laptop and desktop upgrades as well as for build-your-own PCs, providing a significant performance boost while using less power for increased battery life and thermal management.

The 990 PRO will be available worldwide starting this October with the manufacturer’s suggested retail prices (MSRP) of $179 for the 1TB model and $309 for the 2TB. A 4TB capacity version will become available from next year. For more information, including warranty details, please visit samsung.com/SSD or semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/internal-ssd/.

Samsung NVMe SSD 990 PRO Series Specifications

[1] PCIe 4.0’s highest theoretical sequential read speed is 8000 MB/s — 990 PRO reaches 7,450 MB/s as of Q3 2022.

[2] Sequential and random performance measurements are based on IOmeter1.1.0. Performance may vary based on SSD’s firmware version, system hardware & configuration.

*Test system configuration: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core Processor CPU@3.80GHz, DDR4 3600MHz 16GBx2 (PC4-25600 Overclock), Windows 10 Pro 64bit, ASRock-X570 Taichi

[3] FORSPOKEN © Luminous Productions Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. FORSPOKEN, LUMINOUS PRODUCTIONS and the LUMINOUS PRODUCTIONS logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Square Enix Co., Ltd.

*Test system configuration: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core Processor 3.70 GHz, AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT 16GB, DDR4-2666 (16GB x2), Windows 11 Pro 21H2

[4] 980 PRO provides power efficiency of 1,129/877 MB per watt for sequential read/write while 990 PRO’s is 1,380/1,319 MB per watt for sequential read/write, based on internal test results of the 1TB capacity model.

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

[6] 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 samsung.com/SSD or semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/internal-ssd/.

[7] Five years or total bytes written (TBW), whichever comes first. For more information on the warranty, please refer to the enclosed warranty document in the package.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced plans to expand its NAND flash production capacity in Pyeongtaek, Korea, reinforcing the company’s ability to meet demands from emerging technologies. Construction, which began this May, will pave the way for mass production of Samsung’s cutting-edge V-NAND memory in the second half of 2021.

“The new investment reaffirms our commitment to sustain undisputed leadership in memory technologies, even in uncertain times,” said Cheol Choi, executive vice president of Memory Global Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “We will continue to serve the market with the most optimized solutions available, while contributing to growth of the overall IT industry and the economy in general.”

In the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution fueled by artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and 5G expansion, the added capacity will play a major role in helping to address mid- to long-term demands for NAND flash memory. As digital lifestyles become more prevalent, Samsung will continue to be proactive in making new investments in order to seize future market opportunities.

Samsung’s NAND flash production network extends from Hwaseong and Pyeongtaek in Korea to Xi’an, China. Established in 2015, Samsung’s Pyeongtaek Campus is a hub for next-generation memory technologies, consisting of two of the world’s largest-scale production lines.

Leveraging its significant edge in manufacturing and technology, Samsung has held the leadership position in NAND flash memory for the past 18 years, with one recent innovation being the industry-first sixth-generation (1xx-layer) V-NAND introduced last July. Through balanced investment across its global sites, Samsung aims to maintain a robust production network that will further cement its market leadership.

Reference: Samsung V-NAND Mass Production Timeline

“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

Samsung plans to launch a 1-Terabyte version 
within the second half of the year

Samsung Electronics the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing the industry’s first 512-gigabyte (GB) embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) 3.0 for next-generation mobile devices. In line with the latest eUFS 3.0 specification, the new Samsung memory delivers twice the speed of the previous eUFS storage (eUFS 2.1), allowing mobile memory to support seamless user experiences in future smartphones with ultra-large high-resolution screens.

“Beginning mass production of our eUFS 3.0 lineup gives us a great advantage in the next-generation mobile market to which we are bringing a memory read speed that was before only available on ultra-slim laptops,” said Cheol Choi, executive vice president of Memory Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “As we expand our eUFS 3.0 offerings, including a 1-Terabyte (TB) version later this year, we expect to play a major role in accelerating momentum within the premium mobile market.”

Samsung produced the industry-first UFS interface with eUFS 2.0 in January, 2015, which was 1.4 times faster than the mobile memory standard at that time, referred to as the embedded multi-media card (eMMC) 5.1. In just four years, the company’s newest eUFS 3.0 matches the performance of today’s ultra-slim notebooks.

Samsung’s 512GB eUFS 3.0 stacks eight of the company’s fifth-generation 512-gigabit (Gb) V-NAND die and integrates a high-performance controller. At 2,100 megabytes-per-second (MB/s), the new eUFS doubles the sequential read rate of Samsung’s latest eUFS memory (eUFS 2.1) which was announced in January. The new solution’s blazing read speed is four times faster than that of a SATA solid state drive (SSDs) and 20 times faster than a typical microSD card, allowing premium smartphones to transfer a Full HD movie to a PC in about three seconds*. In addition, the sequential write speed also has been improved by 50 percent to 410MB/s, which is equivalent to that of a SATA SSD.

The new memory’s random read and write speeds provide up to a 36-percent increase over the current eUFS 2.1 industry specification, at 63,000 and 68,000 Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS), respectively. With the significant gains in random read and writes that are more than 630 times faster than general microSD cards (100 IOPS), a number of complex applications can be simultaneously run, while achieving enhanced responsiveness, especially on the newest generation of mobile devices.

Following the 512GB eUFS 3.0 as well as a 128GB version that are both launching this month, Samsung plans to produce 1TB and 256GB models in the second half of the year, to further help global device manufacturers in better delivering tomorrow’s mobile innovations.

*The calculation is based on transferring a 3.7GB full HD movie file from a mobile device with the 512GB eUFS 3.0 to a PC with a non-volatile memory express (NVMe) interface SSD.

※ Reference: Comparison of Samsung’s internal memory performance

With its decades-long technology innovation and expertise, Samsung Electronics’ Device Solutions Division provides an extensive range of semiconductor and LED solutions to meet the ever-increasing requirements of the mobile industry. While not always visible to end users, Samsung’s component solutions have been utilized comprehensively to raise the level of what’s possible for mobile devices, and help enable a world of difference in performance and user experience.

Here, we go under the hood, to take a look at some of these solutions.

Leading-edge Processor and Memory Solutions for a Seamless User Experience

One prime example of Samsung’s component innovation is the Exynos 9 Series 9810 processor, built upon the company’s latest 2^nd generation 10-nanometer LPP process technology. The processor delivers powerful mobile computing performance with its 3^rd generation CPU and seamless connectivity with a 6-mode/all network supporting 1.2Gbps DL 6CA Cat.18 LTE modem.

Working in tandem with the Exynos processor is the LPDDR4X memory chip, the industry’s most up-to-date mobile DRAM solution that provides breakthrough RAM performance and energy efficiency. Available in a compact package offering up to 8-gigabyte (GB) capacity, the LPDDR4X enables prompt multitasking and data processing for advanced mobile applications such as 4K UHD video recording and virtual computing.

Also, under today’s heavy multimedia and content use environment, users can safely store their valuable data on Samsung eUFS, an embedded high-speed mobile storage solution for flagship devices. Based on Samsung’s proprietary V-NAND technology, the eUFS features ultrafast data read and download speeds as well as abundant storage capacity as high as 512GB.

Enhanced Imaging and Video Features

The Samsung ISOCELL Fast 2L3, a 3-stack fast readout image sensor with an embedded 2Gb LPDDR4 memory, enables significantly enhanced mobile imaging and video functionality with the ability to record at 960fps for brand new features like stunning super slow-motion video shooting. Also among Samsung’s broad image sensor lineup is a front-facing ISOCELL Bright image sensor, which enables high-quality selfies on mobile devices even in very low light settings, using leading-edge pixel technologies.

In addition, Samsung’s Patterned Lens-Integrated Flash LED component, positioned next to the rear camera, enhances the quality of images even further with its high luminous intensity and uniformity.

Reinforced Security, Power and Touch Command Management 

Samsung continues to reinforce security, power, and touch command management on mobile devices through an array of component solutions. For example, its new iris sensor enables a fast yet highly secure option to unlock or authorize application access, and the touch controller enables instant feedback at the tap of one’s finger. Last but not the least, Samsung’s power management IC delivers a stable supply of power, supporting devices to perform with optimal energy efficiency.

As mobile devices continue to evolve, Samsung Electronics’ Device Solutions Division will remain committed to developing and providing its customers with semiconductor and LED technology with distinct value, and providing the best in performance, capacity, functionality and energy efficiency.