Samsung today announced its largest enterprise SSD to date. The PM1643 has a capacity of a whopping 30.72 terabyte, made possible by Samsung's latest 64-layer 512 gigabit TLC V-NAND chips. Besides the large regular NAND capacity, the drive also has a cache that consists of 40GB of DRAM.
The PM1643 is targeted for use in "next-generation enterprise storage systems", according to Samsung in the press release announcing the drive. The Korean electronics giant also mentions it has made several "technology progressions" in order to be able to create the PM1643. One of them is the controller which the company calls, "a highly efficient controller architecture that integrates nine controllers from the previous high-capacity SSD lineup into a single package."
Besides the controller, also advancements in NAND flash memory have made it possible for Samsung to create the SSD. Samsung reports the drive contains 32 of its latest 1TB NAND flash packages that each consist of 16-layers of 512Gb V-NAND chips.
Performance-wise, the drive is able to achieve maximum sequential reads of 2,100 MB/s and maximum sequential writes of 1,700 MB/s. Random reads are specified at a maximum of 400,000 IOPS while maximum random reads are specified at 50,000 IOPS.
Because the drive utilizes the Serial Attached Storage (SAS) interface it's not limited by the SATA bottleneck that limits SATA SSDs to sequential speeds of around 560 MB/s.
The 40 GB DRAM cache is also possible thanks to a novelty, Samsung explains, "the PM1643 drive also applies Through Silicon Via (TSV) technology to interconnect 8Gb DDR4 chips, creating 10 4GB TSV DRAM packages, totaling 40GB of DRAM. "
According to the company, it's the first time 'TSV applied DRAM' has been used in an SSD. TSV produced DRAM takes less space, consumes less power and is up to 25% faster than traditional DRAM.
Endurance-wise, Samsung specifies a level of 1 DWPD, meaning the drive is able to write 30.72 TB per day during its 5 years of warranty without failing. The company will start mass production of the drive as of today, after it started manufacturing initial quantities of the PM1643 in January.
Samsung plans to expand the lineup later this year, drives with capacities of 15.36TB, 7.68TB, 3.84TB, 1.92TB, 960GB and 800GB are planned.
The company has not disclosed any pricing information. As an indication, Samsung's PM1633 SAS SSD with a capacity of 15.36 TB sells at around $10,000 in the United States and €8,000 in Europe.
