Samsung 8th Gen V-NAND Pushes PCIe 5.0 SSDs Past 12 GBps

Samsung announced (opens in new tab) that it had begun mass production of its presumably 236-layer three-dimensional NAND memory, which the company brands as its 8th Generation V-NAND. The new ICs feature a 2400 MTps transfer speed, and when combined with an advanced controller, they can enable client-grade SSDs with a transfer speed of over 12 GBps.

The new 8th Generation V-NAND device features a 1Tb capacity (128GB), which Samsung calls the industry’s highest bit density without disclosing the size of the IC or the actual density. The IC also features a 2400 MTps data transfer rate, which is vital for the best SSDs featuring a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface that will offer blazing 12.4 GBps (or more!) once paired with an appropriate controller.

Samsung claims that the new generation of its 3D NAND memory will offer a higher per-wafer productivity compared to its existing flash ICs of the same capacity, something that lowers the company’s costs (provided the same yields), which potentially means cheaper SSDs.

Samsung’s new 1Tb 3D TLC 8th Generation V-NAND uses a quad-plane architecture to maximize parallelism and therefore improve performance.

“As market demand for denser, greater-capacity storage pushes for higher V-NAND layer counts, Samsung has adopted its advanced 3D scaling technology to reduce surface area and height, while avoiding the cell-to-cell interference that normally occurs with scaling down,” said SungHoi Hur, Executive Vice President of Flash Product & Technology at Samsung Electronics. “Our eighth-generation V-NAND will help meet rapidly growing market demand and better position us to deliver more differentiated products and solutions, which will be at the very foundation of future storage innovations.”

Samsung has not announced any actual products based on its 8th gen V-NAND memory, yet we can presume that the first devices will cater to client applications.