Samsung launches new SSD storage for servers

By Yoon Sung-won

Samsung Electronics, the world’s top memory chip maker, unveiled a new server solid-state drive (SSD) with a 15.36-terabyte (TB) storage capacity, Thursday.

The company said it plans to continue to push into the SSD market, replacing conventional hard-disk drives that require heavy maintenance costs.

“We are doing our utmost to meet the global server operators’ request for the supply expansion of super high-capacity SSDs,” Samsung Electronics’ memory business division Senior Vice President Lee Jung-bae said in a statement. “We will continue to lead the growth in the global premium memory market by preemptively releasing next-generation SSDs based on our three-dimensional memory technology.”

Samsung Electronic said the new product, dubbed “serial attached small computer system interface (SAS) SSD,” has a storage capacity four times larger than existing ones. SAS refers to a system interface used for servers and storages that allow the production of SSDs which work twice as fast as ones designed with the serial advanced technology attachment (SATA) technology for personal computers. The demand for SAS SSDs has continued to expand in the enterprise market.

The 15.36TB SAS SSD has the third-generation 256-gigabyte VNAND, a dedicated controller and firmware technology which has four times the capacity of second-generation VNAND technology. It also has up to 10 times more durability than standard SATA SSDs with 10-nano 128-gigabyte VNAND technology.

Samsung Electronics said the new product will provide double efficiency both in performance and capacity when enterprise clients build a storage system compared to the conventional 2.5-inch SATA SSDs.

The company said it will start mass-producing the new SSDs next month and will began manufacturing smaller ones with 7.68TB, 3.85TB, 1.92TB, 960-gigabyte and 480-gigabyte storages later.