Data Backup Digest

Samsung’s V-NAND memory isn’t exactly new. An updated version of NAND, the technology is commonly found in modern USB thumb drives, memory cards and some solid-state drives. While V-NAND is highly touted for its speed and efficiency in data storage, it’s remained quite limited in capacity – until now.

What is V-NAND?

The concept behind V-NAND memory is relatively simple. It complements the traditional NAND format by allowing manufacturers to vertically stack chips – hence the “V” in V-NAND – for even greater density and capacity. Even with the vertical stacking technology, V-NAND memory still hasn’t achieved the levels of capacity seen in modern hard drives of today.

Introducing the 1TB V-NAND Chip

Samsung recently unveiled the 1TB V-NAND chip, which will be featured in commercial data storage products as early as 2018. The team originally announced development of the chip back in 2013, but it would be still be several years until it was available for public consumption. That time is now.

Gyoyoung Jin, executive vice president and head of Memory Business with Samsung Electronics, spoke about the recent breakthrough by saying: “Our new, highly advanced V-NAND technologies will offer smarter solutions for greater value by providing high data processing speeds, increased system scalability and ultra-low latency for today’s most demanding cloud-based applications. We will continue to pioneer flash innovation by leveraging our expertise in advanced 3D-NAND memory technology to significantly enhance the way in which information-rich data is processed.”

The 1TB V-NAND chip also makes it possible to achieve 2TB of storage – via a vertical stack – within a single device. Samsung’s breakthrough will play a huge role in bolstering server storage capacity and efficiency within the years to come.

Pioneering a New Form Factor

The team with Samsung is also introducing new form factor, Known as Next Generation Small Form Factor (NGSFF), to their hard drives. Meant to replace the line of M.2 SSDs that are currently seen in servers, the NGSFF SSD has a smaller form factor of 30.5mm x 110mm x 4.38mm, which accommodates four time as much memory as older system that utilize the older form factor of the M.2 drives.

Developers with Samsung also revealed the SZ985 SSD. Built with Z-SSD technology, the drive is specifically meant for large-scale enterprises that routinely work with huge datasets and data-intensive operations.

Finally, Samsung introduced their proprietary Key Value SSD, which uses a new method of processing data within the drive itself. Instead of storing data via blocks, like traditional SSDs, the Key Value methodology uses keys. This enables the drive to process data without having to first convert it into blocks, which improves the overall input and output speeds of the drive. Moreover, it also extends the life expectancy of modern SSDs, which has been another common complaint of the next-gen technology.

To find out more information on Samsung, including details on any of their products, IT solutions or services, please visit their official website at www.samsung.com.