Samsung builds its own super-dense SSD chip to fight off SanDisk and Toshiba

By Matthew S. Smith August 11, 2015

samsung introduces its own 256gbit 48 layer nand chip solid state drive — JIPEN/Shutterstock

At the beginning of August, SanDisk and Toshiba announced their partnership had borne fruit in the form of the world’s first 256Gbit (32GB), 48-layer, 3-bit per cell solid state drive. That lead hasn’t lasted for long, however, as Samsung has already announced its own version of the same invention.

Samsung, which calls its version of stacked NAND memory V-NAND (the V is for vertical, of course), has announced its own 256 Gbit, 48-layer, 3-bit-per-cell chip. While the company announced a 48-layer chip several weeks ago, its capacity was “only” 128 Gbit. The new chip takes storage density to the next level.

“Samsung’s new 256 Gb 3D V-NAND flash doubles the density of conventional 128 Gb NAND flash chips. In addition to enabling 32 gigabytes (256 gigabits) of memory storage on a single die, the new chip will also easily double the capacity of Samsung’s existing SSD line-ups, and provide an ideal solution for multi-terabyte SSDs,” said Samsung in its press release.

Increasing data density has a simple, obvious, and important impact; it allows the creation of drives that store more in less space. When Samsung built its original 48-layer chip, for example, it followed up with the release of new 2TB Samsung 850 Evo and Pro drives.

Now that Samsung has made this announcement, the race is on for it to reach production drives. SanDisk and Toshiba said that we wouldn’t see products with the partner’s chip until 2016, so that leaves some time to bring new hardware to market. That said, Samsung has not currently announced any new drives for either the consumer or enterprise market, so we’ll have to wait and see which manufacturer will be the first to convert this technology to a product that users can buy.

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Matthew S. Smith

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Matthew S. Smith is the former Lead Editor, Reviews at Digital Trends. He previously guided the Products Team, which dives…

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