Samsung to deliver 128TB SAS SSD with QLC NAND in 2018

Samsung revealed a bunch of details about its future flash memory plans at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California. One of the big announcements concerns 4-bits-per-cell flash, Samsung says its first QLC-based SSDs will hit the market next year.

Samsung explained its big customers define performance and endurance specifications - and don't care about whether a disk uses MLC, TLC or QLC as long as those specifications are met. Presumably, the company is talking about datacenter customers here. The first-generation QLC V-NAND product will be a 128TB SAS SSD. This disk will feature QLC NAND dies with a capacity of 1TB per die and Samsung will stack an industry-leading 32 dies per package. So these 128TB SSDs will feature four 32TB NAND packages.

Performance per die of the QLC products is expected to be lower than TLC, but thanks to the big increase in parallelization the performance figures could be better than expected. Not a lot of details were shared about QLC, the main highlight was on the big increase in storage capacity.

Tom's Hardware also heard some details about the Samsung Z-NAND, a technology that competes with Intel's Optane:

Last year, Samsung announced a competing technology to Intel's Optane but didn't give us too many details to write about. We speculated the technology used some form of optimized SLC (single-level cell) flash and, according to the latest from the company, we were correct. The Z-SSD shipping today to select customers carries the SZ985 name, but this first-generation product with 800GB of usable capacity will soon be replaced by a second-gen model. The next leap for Z-SSD using Z-NAND technology will add a bit to each cell, MLC Z-NAND, and increase overall density. Just don't expect either Z-SSD to appear on Newegg anytime soon.

Other interesting subjects Samsung talked about include a next-gen small form factor that it nicknamed "M.3". This is not an official industry specification but something Samsung cooked up itself.

The Samsung Next-Generation Small Form Factor (NGSFF) is a bit wider than M.2 but it uses the same pin arrangement and is electrically compatible. Improvements include the ability to fit two NAND packages across the width of the PCB, while still leaving room for a controller and DRAM, which should result in cheaper designs. There's also no restriction on just using a single side. Another big new feature includes hot swap-ability.

Consumers can look forward to the Samsung 970 and 980 NVMe SSDs. Samsung didn't announce these disks but Tom's Hardware found details on the UNH InterOperability Laboratory list. Perhaps the 970 and 980 will be revealed next month.