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Samsung Starts Mass Producing New 512GB NVMe SSD That's Smaller Than a Stamp (pcworld.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the industry's-first dept.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via PCWorld: Samsung announced late Monday night that it has begun mass producing a new SSD that is tinier than a postage stamp. PCWorld reports: "The PM971-NVMe fits up to 512GB of NAND flash, a controller, and RAM into a single BGA chip measuring 20mm x 16mm x 1.5mm and weighing just one gram, the company said. Samsung says the PM971-NVMe will hit 1.5GBps read speeds and 800MBps write speeds. The PM971-NVMe is built using 20nm NAND chips and includes 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM as a cache. The NAND is triple-level cell but uses a portion as a write butter. The drive will come in 512GB, 256GB and 128GB capacities." While on the topic of hardware, Intel unveiled its Broadwell-E family, which consists of an "Extreme Edition" Core i7 chipset that has 10 cores and 20 threads.

14 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Stamp-sized SSDs... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Funny

    If the new stamp-sized SSDs are priced like stamps, I'll take a whole book.

    1. Re: Stamp-sized SSDs... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      They are priced like extremely rare collector stamps.

    2. Re:Stamp-sized SSDs... by Sir+Realist · · Score: 4, Funny

      Stamp-sized SSDs; that's awesome!

      What's a stamp?

    3. Re: Stamp-sized SSDs... by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Informative

      They are priced like extremely rare collector stamps.

      EXCEPT that the ones with errors do not sell for a premium.

  2. The NAND isn't 20nm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    The LPDDR4 is 20nm. The NAND is their 48 layer vnand per the linked article. Pretty impressive amount of packaging/die stacking going on there.

    1. Re: The NAND isn't 20nm by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 2

      I just pulled out my calipers and checked, it should fit in an SD card as far as size goes. Will they write a driver for that? One would hope...

      --
      You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
    2. Re: The NAND isn't 20nm by wierd_w · · Score: 2

      You can already get 256gb SDcards.

      What I am more interested in, is why isnt there a more user friendly SSD socket type out there akin to SDCard.

      Your typical SDCard socket has ample interconnect leads and good enough conductivity to be driven similarly to a SATA device, and could even be seen as a SATA device. If this device is that small, the market for feild upgradable SSDs on ultrathin or ultracompact devices at SATA speeds is a deal changer. It makes me wonder why nobody has done it yet.

      I could see constraints on SDCard based designs, as the addressing and write optimizing methods arent really tailored to full speed SATA operation, but an actual SSD design in that size range is another creature all together. I brand new SDCard type with no back compatibility driving at full SATA600 speeds would be phenomenal. They would outright dominate the digital camera market, and would enable a whole host of ultra-thin devices to get reasonable upgradable storage.

      I say this because at that size, the 6 or so pins on a SATA connector could be upgraded to 8, (for DC power), the whole thing COULD be SDCard sized, AND bitching fast.

    3. Re: The NAND isn't 20nm by Gr8Apes · · Score: 2

      Because NVMe drives are meant to go about 10 times the speed of SATA III. That might be a slight strain on the interconnect.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    4. Re: The NAND isn't 20nm by Trongy · · Score: 2

      There are already XQD cards that seem to meet your criteria. Nikon has the interface on their higher end carmeras. The are bigger than SD cards, but more robust looking and still smaller than the old CF cards.

      XQD uses PCI express to transfer data so the interface shouln't be a bootleneck at the moment.

      My understanding is that SD had a controller on board to be easily imeplemented on portable devices which didn't have a PCIe bus.

  3. Write butter? by rholtzjr · · Score: 3, Funny

    Mmmm, might want to combine that with the read toast to compliment the write butter.

  4. "20mm x 16mm x 1.5mm and weighing just 1 g" by Nutria · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It would cost a small fortune, but you could easily fit 50TB or more of data in a 1" x 3.5" HDD form factor.

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    1. Re:"20mm x 16mm x 1.5mm and weighing just 1 g" by Kjella · · Score: 2

      They would probably burn pretty hot, but yes, the possibilities are rather startling. It will be an interesting day when SSDs overtake HDDs on practical metrics such as data density, and even more so on price. Any predictions on when that is going to happen?

      There's already 200GB MicroSD cards and 16TB 2.5" SSDs for sale, so I'm pretty sure density is a long won match. Price/GB is another matter, but HDDs don't scale down. I just checked and if you only need 128 GB of space, you pay the same for a HDD as for a SSD. Sure, the HDD will be 500GB but if you don't need it because cloud, streaming etc. you can't save more by buying a smaller HDD. And if you don't want one for a boot drive, you have the budget for a 256GB SSD before SSD+HDD becomes cheaper. I really don't mind HDDs for bulk media, we play movies from discs or stream them over internet connections that are much slower than that.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  5. But will it support ads? by manu144x · · Score: 5, Funny

    Will the firmware randomly create ads?

  6. -1 Offtopic for BeauHD. by dinfinity · · Score: 2

    While on the topic of hardware, Intel unveiled its Broadwell-E family, which consists of an "Extreme Edition" Core i7 chipset that has 10 cores and 20 threads.

    Stop. This. Stupid. Shit. Now.