Samsung's PM1643 SSD Hulk Smashes All Rivals With Colossal 30TB Of Storage
Samsung claims that the PM1643 is the world's largest SSD (they're probably not counting Seagate's 60TB SSD, as it still hasn't shipped) and makes use of 64-layer, 3-bit 512-gigabit chips using V-NAND technology. This latest SSD offers exactly twice the capacity of Samsung’s previous high watermark: the 15.36TB PM1633a that was unveiled back in 2016.
16 stacked layers of 512Gb V-NAND combine to create a single 1TB NAND flash package. Then, Samsung crams 32 of those 1TB packages into 2.5-inch form-factor to create the PM1643. Using the 12GB/s SAS interface, the company says that the drives offer random read and write speeds of 400,000 IOPS and 50,000 IOPS respectively. Sequential read and write speeds clock in at 2,100MB/sec and 1,700MB/sec respectively.
For comparison, the existing PM1633a puts up random read/writes of 200,000/32,000 IOPS and sequential reads of 1.2GB/sec.
Samsung was able to make these advances in performance and capacity thanks to 9 controllers that have been integrated into a single package (for greater space efficiency on the SSD) and Through Silicon Via (TSV) technology to provide a faster interconnect for the 40GB of DRAM. The PM1643 is also capable of handling one full drive write per day and offers a MTBF of 2 million hours to go along with its five-year warranty.
Pricing has not yet been announced for the PM1643, but samples began rolling off the production line in January and production examples will go on sale later this year. But to give you an idea of how expensive it will be when it launches, the 15.36GB PM1633a retails for around $11,600.
