7X Faster SSD
According to industry sources, Samsung Electronics recently developed Z-NAND and a controller optimized for it. The manufacturing of these products is expected to start next year. At present, these products are in a test production phase and Samsung Electronics recently began to discuss supply with clients.
Z-NAND is small in capacity as it is based on a single level cell (SLC), in which one bit is allocated to each cell. However, Z-NAND has advantages in terms of response speed, power consumption and so on. A Z-SSD incorporating this type of NAND has a reading speed about seven times that of solid state drives in general.
Samsung Electronics’ preparation for large-scale Z-SSD production is to cope with the 3D XPoint SSD Intel and Micron Technology developed in April this year. 3D XPoint is a type of phase-change memory and its speed and durability overwhelm those of NAND on the market.
The global SSD market is growing rapidly these days as SSDs are replacing hard disk drives. Specifically, its size reached US$20 billion last year and is estimated to reach US$30 billion within four years. The average SSD selling price is estimated to fall from US$0.61 to US$0.09 per gigabyte between 2014 and 2021.