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Samsung launches NVMe SSD based on next generation small form factor

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Samsung Electronics has launched a NVMe solid state drive (SSD) based on the incredibly small Next-generation Small Form Factor (NGSFF).

The new 8TB NVMe NF1 SSD has been optimised for data-intensive analytics and virtualization applications in next-generation data centres and enterprise server systems.

"By introducing the first NF1 NVMe SSD, Samsung is taking the investment efficiency in data centres to new heights," said Sewon Chun, senior vice president of Memory Marketing at Samsung.

The SSD is built with 16 of Samsung’s 512-gigabyte (GB) NAND packages, each stacked in 16 layers of 256 gigabit (Gb) 3-bit V-NAND chips, achieving an 8TB density in an ultra-small footprint of 11cm x 3.05cm. This is twice the capacity offered by the M.2 NVMe SSD (11cm x 2.2cm) commonly used in hyper-scale server designs and ultra-slim laptops.

The NF1 SSD is expected to replace conventional 2.5-inch NVMe SSDs by enabling up to three times the system density in existing server infrastructure, allowing for an unprecedented 576TB of storage space in the latest 2U rack servers.

The NF1 SSD features a brand new, high-performance controller that supports the NVMe 1.3 protocol and PCIe 4.0 interface, delivering sequential read speeds of 3,100 megabytes per second (MB/s) and write speeds of 2,000MB/s. These speeds are more than five times and three times that of a typical SATA SSD, respectively.

Random speeds come in at 500,000 IOPS for read operations and 50,000 IOPS for writes. By using the new NF1 storage solution, an enterprise server system can perform over one million IOPS in a 2U rack space, significantly enhancing the return on investment for next-generation large-scale data centres, according to Samsung The SSD also includes a 12GB LPDDR4 DRAM to enable faster and more energy-efficient data processing.

To ensure long-term data reliability, the NF1 NVMe SSD has been designed with an endurance level of 1.3 drive write per day (DWPD), which guarantees writing an entire 8TB of data 1.3 times a day.

Samsung plans to accompany its 256Gb 3-bit V-NAND-based SSD with a 512Gb version later this year to accommodate even faster processing for big data applications, while also accelerating the growth in next-generation enterprise and mid-market data centres.