Samsung Teases 256 TB SSD: 3D QLC NAND at Its Best
by Anton Shilov on August 11, 2023 8:05 AM EST
Samsung teased the industry's first 256 TB solid-state drive at the Flash Memory Summit 2023. The new drive features unprecedented storage density and is aimed primarily at hyper-scale data centers where storage density and reduced power consumption matter the most.
Samsung's 256 TB SSD is based on 3D QLC NAND memory and probably uses innovative packaging to cram multiple 3D QLC NAND devices into stacks. The company does not disclose which form factor the drive uses. Still, because the unit is aimed mainly at hyper scalers, we expect Samsung to offer them in one of the emerging ESDFF form factors or Samsung's proprietary NGSFF form factor. For now, the only thing that Samsung discloses about its 256 TB SSD is that it is several times more energy efficient than existing drives that carry 32 TB of raw NAND.
"Compared to stacking eight 32 TB SSDs, one 256 TB SSD consumes approximately seven times less power, despite storing the same amount of data," a statement by Samsung reads.
In addition to teasing its 256 TB SSD, Samsung formally announced its next-generation datacenter PM9A3a family of drives with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface that is expected to offer serious performance and high power efficiency.
Samsung says that its new PM9A3a SSDs increase sequential read performance by up to 2.3 times (i.e., to 14.95 GB/s) and random write performance by more than 2x compared to the previous generation PM9A3, which uses a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface. In addition, these new drives promise a 60% power efficiency improvement (presumably compared to predecessors) and enhanced Telemetry and Debug functions.
Samsung's PM9A3a SSDs will be available in various form factors in the first half of 2024, featuring capacities from 3.84 TB all the way up to 30.72 TB.
Source: Samsung
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Samus - Saturday, August 12, 2023 - link
A) Women like porn too2) I agree, who downloads pr0n anymore? Frankly now that I have a family and kids, I don't actually want that shit on my PC's lol
PeachNCream - Sunday, August 13, 2023 - link
Why A) and then 2)?boozed - Sunday, August 13, 2023 - link
III) BecauseDirtyLoad - Monday, August 14, 2023 - link
Actually, it should be b) but who's counting?DirtyLoad - Monday, August 14, 2023 - link
The only reason I think of porn is because my wife loves to watch porn with me. It really gets her engine revving.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - link
'Teases'Every journalist who uses that corporate-speak should be 'teased' with a halibut.
meacupla - Friday, August 11, 2023 - link
I would be happy with a 16TB 2280 NVMe SSD.bill.rookard - Friday, August 11, 2023 - link
I'd be happy with an affordable 16tb 2.5" SATA SSD... (pair up 4 of those to make some nice sized media)To be fair, I just picked up 4 2TB SSD's (new) for about $60 each. Gonna pick up 4 more for a total of 16TB for just under $500. If we could get parity with HDDs on a $/GB scale that would be good for me. I'd switch everything over to SSDs immediately, but they just don't offer larger bulk storage SSD's for RAIDed systems at a fair price. Usually going larger saves you $/GB, but not with SSDs yet.
meacupla - Friday, August 11, 2023 - link
Yeah, budget SSDs are very price competitive compared to 2.5" HDDs at 2TB, but completely pale in comparison in larger capacities.nandnandnand - Sunday, August 13, 2023 - link
I just learned that the TeamGroup QX 15.36 TB exists.https://www.anandtech.com/show/16061/teamgroup-pre...
I think 2.5" SATA will be neglected in favor of M.2 NVMe. And an adapter can be used.