Samsung Electronics Begins Production of 4-bit Consumer SSD

The technology world will be acquiring its first ever 4-bit SSD in the near future for consumers to purchase.

Samsung Electronics has begun mass-producing its first 4-bit, QLC, quad-level cell, 4-terabyte (TB) SATA solid-state drive (SSD) for consumers.

The device is based on 1-terabit (Tb) V-NAND. It  will offer competitive performance. This smartphone can be compared to the company’s 3-bit design, Samsung’s QLC SSD. The newer device is expected to bring a new level of efficiency to consumer SSDs.

“Samsung’s new 4-bit SATA SSD will herald a massive move to terabyte-SSDs for consumers,” said Jaesoo Han, EVP, memory sales and marketing, Samsung Electronics. “As we expand our lineup across consumer segments and to the enterprise, 4-bit terabyte-SSD products will rapidly spread throughout the entire market.”

Accompanied with a new 1Tb 4-bit V-NAND chip, Samsung will be able to produce a 128GB memory card for smartphones that will lead toward higher capacities for high-performance memory storage. Data is often stored within a memory cell and is increased from three to four bits. This makes the chip capacity per unit area rise and the electrical charge, which is used to determine information from a sensor. The outcome would a decrease in capacity by as much as 50 percent. This allows the device to be considerably more difficult to maintain a device’s desired performance and speed.

Does this Samsung device maintain its performance? Samsung’s 4-bit 4TB QLC SATA SSD maintains its performance levels at the same level as a 3-bit SSD. The device accomplishes this by using a 3-bit SSD controller and TurboWrite technology, while increasing drive capacity through the use of 32 chips, all based on 64-layer fourth-generation 1Tb V-NAND.

The 4-bit QLC SSD enables a sequential read speed of 540 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 520 MB/s. The smartphone comes with a three-year warranty. Moving forward, Samsung hopes to introduce several 4-bit consumer SSDs later this year. They should be equipped with 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities in the widely used 2.5-inch form factor.

Samsung Electronics expects to provide M.2 NVMe SSDs for the enterprise this year and begin mass production of 4-bit fifth-generation V-NAND. This will considerably expand its SSD lineup to meet the growing demand for faster, more reliable performance across a wide span of applications, such as next generation data centers, enterprise servers, and enterprise storage.