Samsung continues to stay ahead of the pack by beginning production of the industry’s first 100-layer V-NAND aimed at enterprise SSDs.
Samsung has started mass production on solid state drives (SDDs) that feature the company’s sixth-generation 256GB three-bit vertical NAND memory. This means the drives come with an industry first 100 layers of NAND cells, a writing speed of 450 microseconds and a reading response time of 45 microseconds. Compared to Samsung’s previous 90-layer SSDs, performance is up 10 percent and power consumption down 15 percent, according to Samsung.
Production steps have been reduced and chip sizes decreased, which will increase production rates by 20%. Samsung has plans to later deploy the new V-NANDs for mobile and automobile applications to cement its leadership position, it said.
Samsung’s semiconductor business has been one of its more stable businesses compared to the stagnating TV market and the fluctuating smartphone market. However, due to the trade row between South Korea and Japan, Samsung’s access to important materials and chemicals has been impacted. In a way, this announcement, which Samsung boasts comes four months early, is meant to assure the market that all is well and is even doing better than well.
