Samsung Begins to Ship 15.36 TB SSD for Enterprise Storage Systems

Samsung on Thursday introduced its new lineup of high-capacity SSDs for enterprises. The new Samsung PM1633a family of drives includes the world’s first SSD that can store 15.36 TB of data and which leaves behind even the leading-edge hard drives. The solid-state drive not only offers the world’s highest-capacity, but also boasts with increased reliability and high performance. The manufacturer is already shipping the new SSDs to select customers.

The Samsung PM1633a 15.36 TB SSD can deliver up to 1200 MB/s sequential read performance and features random read and write speeds of up to 200,000 and 32,000 IOPS respectively, according to the manufacturer. The 15.36 TB SSD supports 1 DWPD (drive writes per day) throughout the period of several years (unfortunately, Samsung does not specify of how many), which indicates very high endurance. The new solid-state storage solution features SAS-12 Gb/s interface and is compatible with servers that support drives in 2.5”/15 mm form-factor. Samsung does not reveal power consumption of the PM1633a 15.36 TB SSD, but based on power requirements the SSD can consume up to 13.7W.

The PM1633a drives are based on Samsung’s new proprietary controller that can concurrently access large amounts of high-density NAND flash with the help of a special firmware. Thanks to the new controller, the PM1633a SSDs are even faster than the PM1633 drives unveiled last August (sequential read and write speeds of up to 1100MB/s and 1000MB/s, up to 160/18 thousand random read/write IOPS). Typically, high-capacity SSDs do not offer truly high performance because of peculiarities of their internal architecture, but Samsung has managed to develop a controller that weds performance and capacity.

The Samsung PM1633a SSDs utilize the company’s third-generation 256 Gb TLC 3D V-NAND memory chips. The 256 Gb dies are stacked in 16 layers and form a single 512 GB package. Samsung uses 32 of such packages to build its most spacious SSD, leaving around 1 TB of NAND for overprovisioning. The giant drive also features 16 GB of DRAM cache to ensure smooth performance. The Samsung PM1633a 15.36 TB will be the second product to use the company’s 48-layer TLC 3D V-NAND after the Portable SSD T3. Eventually, Samsung will further expand usage of this flash memory.

The advantages of 15.36 TB SSDs in the server space are hard to overestimate. There are 2U servers that can fit in 48 SAS3/12G storage devices (1, 2). Each of such machines can store 737.28 TB of data (if fully populated with Samsung’s new PM1633a SSDs), whereas a 42U cabinet featuring 21 of such servers will be able to store 15482 TB of data (15.4 PB). By contrast, storage capacity of a standard 42U storage rack based on 360 3.5” 10TB HDDs is around 3600 TB.

Samsung did not reveal the price of its 15.36 TB SSD, but is probably in the range of several thousands of dollars.

Later this year Samsung plans to add drives with 7.68 TB, 3.84 TB, 1.92 TB, 960 GB and 480 GB into its PM1633a lineup.

Gallery: Samsung Begins to Ship 15.36 TB SSD for Enterprise Storage Systems

ZOTAC Announces SONIX PCIe SSD Price & Availability

ZOTAC has formally announced its PCIe SONIX SSD, which was first demonstrated at CES earlier this year. Confirming the final specifications and design, the company said that the new drive would be available in the middle of this month at a price-point comparable to that of other PCIe-based SSDs. The availability of the ZOTAC SONIX will mark the arrival of a new breed of high-performance PCIe SSDs based on the Phison PS5007-E7 controller.

The final version of the ZOTAC SONIX will be faster than the preliminary version of the SSD demonstrated at CES, with the shipping version rated for sequential read performance of 2600 MB/s and sequential write performance of up to 1300 MB/s. The initial flavor of the ZOTAC SONIX SSD will offer 480 GB capacity, will be equipped with 512 MB of DDR3 DRAM cache and will come in half-length half-height PCI Express 3.0 x4 card form-factor. The drive will consume 5.57W when performing read operations, 7.27W while writing and 0.5W in idle mode, according to the supplier.

The ZOTAC SONIX SSD will be among the first solid-state drives to use Phison’s PS5007-E7 controller demonstrated in mid-2015. The chip fully supports NVMe 1.2 protocol, error correction with 120-bit/2KB BCH code, NVMe L1.2 power saving mode, end-to-end data path protection, advanced global wear-leveling, an AES-256 engine and so on. The PS5007-E7 has eight NAND flash transfer channels and can perform up to 300K random read IOPS (input/output operations per second) as well as 200K random write IOPS. As we reported back in January, the PS5007-E7 had been finalized and the final firmware was due in February.

As expected, the ZOTAC SONIX drive will use Toshiba’s multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory and will be positioned as ZOTAC’s premium offering. The product will hit the market in mid-March at the price of $369.99, which is comparable to that of Kingston’s HyperX Predator M.2 480 GB SSD ($364.99) as well as Samsung’s 950 Pro M.2 512 GB SSD ($327.99).

It should be noted that Phison not only develops controllers, but sells packages consisting of a controller, NAND flash memory, firmware and even production services. The majority of Phison-based SSDs are made by a contract manufacturer under supervision of the controller developer. While the approach somewhat constraints innovation of SSD suppliers because drives based on the same Phison controller offer similar feature-set and performance, it also guarantees relatively high quality, competitive pricing and broad availability.

If ZOTAC starts to ship its SONIX PCIe SSD in mid-March, other partners of Phison, including Corsair, Kingston, Mushkin, Patriot, PNY and other will likely follow shortly. As a result, the market should have a significant number of PCIe 3.0 x4 and M.2 SSDs with up to 2600 MB/s sequential read performance based on MLC NAND memory. Competition between various suppliers will naturally affect prices of actual products, which is good for the end-user. Keeping in mind that Samsung’s 950 Pro M.2 512 GB SSD already costs $328, it looks like prices of high-end PCIe NVMe SSDs this year will get very competitive. Moreover, when and if new SSDs based on SandForce’s SF3500 controller arrive, things will get even more intense.

Gallery: ZOTAC Discloses Price and Availability Timeframe of Its PCIe SSD

The Toshiba Q300 SSD Review: Toshiba Becomes a Retail Brand

Today we’re looking at Toshiba’s Q300 SSD. The Q300 is the entry-level model from the Toshiba’s first line of SSDs sold directly to consumers and through retail outlets. Based on the same platform as their OCZ subsidiary’s Trion 100, it competes in the crowded market for low-end drives using TLC NAND flash.