Samsung Shares SSD Roadmap for QLC NAND And 96-layer 3D NAND

[harlan4096]

At Samsung's Tech Day event today in San Jose, the company shared their SSD roadmap for transitioning to 96-layer 3D NAND and introducing four bit per cell (QLC) NAND flash memory. Successors have been named for most of their current SSDs that use three bit per cell (TLC) NAND flash and are being updated with 96-layer 3D TLC, and new product lines using QLC NAND have been introduced.

Taking TLC to new heights

Most of the updates to the TLC-based SSDs are fairly straightforward NAND upgrades that use existing SSD controllers. The PM981 client NVMe SSD and the 970 EVO retail counterpart that use 64-layer 3D TLC will be succeeded by the PM981a and 970 EVO Plus respectively. Capacity options remain the same, ranging from 250GB to 2TB. The most significant performance improvements are to sequential write speeds, but the PM981a also brings significant random I/O improvements that almost catch it up to the 970 EVO and 970 EVO Plus.

Full reading: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13497/sam...er-3d-nand