Samsung unveils a 16TB solid state drive

It noted; “To reach such an astonishing density, Samsung has managed to cram 48 layers of 3-bits-per-cell (TLC) 3D V-NAND into a single die”. It’s listed as 16TB (technically, it’s 15.36TB), and the best part about it is that it’s a solid state drive using Samsung’s new 256GB NAND flash as the basis for the storage.

“This represents a level of reliability quite sufficient for enterprise storage systems that have to perform ultrafast transmission of large amount of data”, Samsung notes.

51 hours of 4K ProRes UHD footage from Black Magic’s 4K Production Camera. That isn’t to say that hard drives will be obviated by SSDs any time soon, of course: at least for the foreseeable future, SSDs are an order of magnitude more expensive than HDDs. As traditional flash chips are arranged flat on a 2D surface, but now Samsung stacks several layers of memory cells next to each other for the greater storage density. Ars Technica reports that the largest current hard drives on the market are manufactured by Seagate (8TB) and Western Digital (10TB).

The whole drive fits into a 2.5-inch hard disk enclosure, though it’s slightly thicker than those found in laptops. Just a year ago, a 120GB SSD would have cost more than a 1TB mechanical hard drive and in any case most SSD manufacturers do not produce drives with capacity over 1TB.

“We are providing high-end capabilities and capacities for all of our latest SSDs, something we believe will elicit a high degree of interest from OEMs and computer enthusiasts throughout the world“, said Jim Elliott, corporate vice president, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.

Samsung announced the new SSD at a flash memory conference in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday in a keynote address titled “Memory Technology Advances Shape a New Era in Flash Innovation”.

He said that SAMSUNG ELECT LTD(F) (OTCMKTS:SSNLF) with the use of the high performance flashes, wanted to strengthen its hold in the consumer, enterprise and data center market segments, while concentrating on the strengthening its SSD focus.