SSD from 16 TB of storage capacity will be possible with the new generation of NAND flash memory that Samsung announced at the ISSCC (International Conference on Semiconductor Circuits), which took place in San Francisco.

SSDs monopolize storage on client devices today. There are no new hard drives being released for the consumer market anymore and the ones we continue to use are old ones that we use for specific tasks like backups, NAS or external drives. The advantages of SSDs are certainly overwhelming (performance, size, consumption…), but there are several points where HDDs continue to dominate. One is price per GB and the other is the maximum capacity they can offer.

16TB SSD on the way

Although we have already seen this type of drive in the professional market (with SATA interface), it was not possible for the consumer market. And it is related to the areal density that the NAND flash memories on which they are based can occupy. TLC (like other MLC and SLC memory layer designs before it) are reaching their limits in terms of raw storage capacity.

The new generation of QLC NAND V9 memories from Samsung aims to double the density achieved by the competition so far, 280 layers and a density of 28.5 Gb per square millimeter. This would make it possible to launch a 16TB SSD in the M.2 format and for the PCIe interface.

Another important point to be made is reduce the price per GB. The unprecedented higher areal density provided by the new QLC chips would reduce costs in the manufacturing process and this should be passed on to the end customer. Another of the mentioned advantages would be the possibility of running an 8Tbyte SSD occupying only one side of the module. For laptops, this is key.

Performance still has a long way to go. Samsung chips would also improve in this section, up to 3.2 Gbps, but it will still be below what modern M.2 can offer, both from Samsung and from other manufacturers. At least we could combine them, a small Gen5 or Gen4 for system and applications and another with a larger capacity for mass storage. Future generations should be even faster than these Samsung V9s and should eventually directly compete with today’s TLC flash architectures in performance.