[How much do you know about flash memory? - Part 3] Samsung Electronics Solidify the SSD Era for Consumers

Through the “How much do you know about flash memory” series, Samsung Semiconstory is exploring the history of flash memory and the work of Samsung Electronics. In “The Paradigm Shift in Storage Accessories, Why Samsung Electronics’ SSD is No.1,” we explored Samsung Electronics’ leadership that became the first in the world to open the new world of commercializing SSD in PC storage devices. Today, we are going to explore how the SSD, which was mostly used for servers and corporations, became easily accessible for the general public too. What led consumers into the new world of SSD? Samsung Electronics’ new challenge, popularizing SSD for general consumers

In 2006, Samsung Electronics became the first to commercialize the SSD. Since then, with a fast speed to data approach and low energy use, they expanded the SSD’s use in the corporation and server markets. Not only so, more and more laptops began to be manufactured with SSDs as the market for premium laptops was formed. But Samsung Electronics did not settle there. Instead, dreaming of popularizing SSDs in the general public, they jumped into the consumer-based SSD market. In 2010, they released the SATA SSD 470 Series for consumers, and the 830 Series, which was released the following year, recorded over 10,000 sales just within 2 months. This once again proved Samsung had made an excellent choice. In 2011, Samsung Electronics sold their HDD business to Seagate Technology in the United States and focused on the SSD business even more. This was to build a diverse line of SSD products based on the consumers’ needs to broaden their choices. Opening the terabyte SSD era with the cutting-edge NAND technology. The biggest factor that brought high-performance and high-capacity SSD products to the general public consumers at an affordable price point was Samsung Electronics’ achievement in 2013 when they became the first in the world to successfully mass-produce 3D Vertical NAND (3D V-NAND).

Samsung Electronics’ 3D V-NAND can be understood better when the data-storing memory cells are compared to “houses” and data to “population.” In the past, there were not many conflicts among neighbors as land was sparsely populated. However, with an increase in population, more houses were built, gradually crowding the land. That caused issues between neighbors like noise complaints and quarrels. To address this issue, Samsung Electronics turned one-story homes (2D structures) into high-rise buildings (3D structures), and that became the industry’s first 3D vertical-structure NAND flash. Samsung Electronics’ V-NAND technology development began in 2013 with the Generation 1 (24 layers) V-NAND, which then grew into Generation 2 (32 layers) in 2014, Generation 3 (48 layers) in 2015, Generation 4 (64 layers) in 2016, Generation 5 (9x layers) in 2018, Generation 6 (1xx layers) in 2019, and more. With exponential growth, this became the footing for the start of the terabyte-SSD era.

By applying multi-bit NAND and the industry’s sole V-NAND in their SSD, Samsung Electronics simultaneously solved the issues of storage capacity and pricing, the barrier to the consumer-use SSD market’s growth. With the world’s best NAND technology, they introduced the world’s first 3-bit MLC SSD 840 Series in October 2012 and the world’s first 3D V-NAND SSD 850 PRO in July 2014 to the SSD market. By upgrading the pre-existing HDD with Samsung’s SSD, the general public consumers could enjoy basic computing tasks like booting Windows, sending files, and using applications, to high-duty tasks like gaming and editing high-resolution videos more conveniently. As laptop use became more common, the amount of data managed by individuals increased, and with that, the demand for a faster and portable storage space grew. Samsung Electronics responded to this trend with the introduction of premium portable SSDs. Unlike the external HDD, which is heavy and slow, they introduced a high-performance external storage that is light and has high data reliability. T1, which Samsung Electronics revealed in January 2015, is a new premium portable SSD with 3D V-NAND. It is very portable with a size smaller than a name card and just 30g in weight. From there, the company’s premium portable SSD evolved into T3 in February 2016, then into T5 in August 2017. In 2018, with NVMe and Thunderbolt 3 interface, they released the SSD X Series with the legendary performance features that reached a new height in external storage.

-NVMe(Non-Volatile Memory Express): A host-controller interface with a PCIe SSD interface-based protocol, developed just for PCIe SSD to maximize the storage performance -Thunderbolt™ 3 : A single-cable solution that uses Intel’s USB-C connector; can send data at 40Gbps max

The latest portable SSD release was the T7 Touch, which is equipped with not only high-performance features but also increased security. This product increased its speed with 5th Generation 512Gb V-NAND and high-speed NVMe controller. It also has a fingerprint security feature as secure as that of flagship smartphones. Upgrading performance with PCIe-based NVMe interface When SSDs first entered the market, consumers considered price as an important factor in choosing their products. But after they realized the SSD’s worth, they began taking storage capacity and performance into consideration too. To keep up with this, Samsung Electronics overcame the speed limits by introducing the PCIe-based NVMe interface. If SATA, the most-commonly used interface for data exchange, had a bandwidth that were compared to a 1-lane road, PCIe would be a 6-lane road. As the number of cars and the speed that these roads can handle are inevitably different, the PCIe-based NVMe interface, with its wide bandwidth and quick response rate, is a storage technology with an increased data exchange speed per second than the SATA interface. Samsung Electronics introduced the PCIe-based NVMe interface on their SSD products faster than anyone else. Starting from the industry’s first 2.5-inch NVMe SSD development for enterprises in 2013, they introduced the NVMe interface to the consumer SSD market in 2015. With NVMe SSD 950 PRO for consumers as the start, they introduced the 960 Series in 2016 and the 970 Series with the portable SSD X5 in 2018, they proved their power as the leader in the consumer-use SSD market. Not only did Samsung Electronics use their exclusive technology and quick judgment to develop storage for servers and corporations, they also opened the new world of high-performance SSDs for general consumers. Samsung Electronics, the No.1 company in flash memory, also became the leader of the consumer-use SSD market. Please look forward to what achievements in flash memory they have made in the next post. See Related Content [How much do you know about flash memory?] The Beginning of Flash Memory No.1’s History [How much do you know about flash memory? - Part 2] The Paradigm Shift in Storage Accessories, Why Samsung Electronics’ SSD is No.1