Samsung unveils 2.5-inch 16TB SSD: The world’s largest hard drive

arstechnica ^ | Aug 13, 2015 | Sebastian Anthony

[TigerLikesRooster]

Samsung unveils 2.5-inch 16TB SSD: The world’s largest hard drive

Third-generation 3D V-NAND is now up to 48 TLC layers and 256Gbit per die.

by Sebastian Anthony - Aug 13, 2015 9:16pm JST

At the Flash Memory Summit in California, Samsung has unveiled what appears to be the world's largest hard drive—and somewhat surprisingly, it uses NAND flash chips rather than spinning platters. The rather boringly named PM1633a, which is being targeted at the enterprise market, manages to cram almost 16 terabytes into a 2.5-inch SSD package. By comparison, the largest conventional hard drives made by Seagate and Western Digital currently max out at 8 or 10TB.

The secret sauce behind Samsung's 16TB SSD is the company's new 256Gbit (32GB) NAND flash die; twice the capacity of 128Gbit NAND dies that were commercialised by various chip makers last year. To reach such an astonishing density, Samsung has managed to cram 48 layers of 3-bits-per-cell (TLC) 3D V-NAND into a single die. This is up from 24 layers in 2013, and then 36 layers in 2014.

[Norm Lenhart]

What a complete waste of time and technology. No one will ever need more than 64K.

[GeronL]

sounds small in physical dimensions

[SunkenCiv]

Nice.

[dfwgator]

That will hold a lot of pr0n.

[dfwgator]

[ClearCase_guy]

It was in the pool! It was in the pool!

[Still Thinking]

2.5” drives are mostly standard in laptops, though I think some laptops use even smaller sizes (or permanently installed memory in lieu of a removable mechanical or SSD drive). Desktop drives are referred to as 3.5” (the ones from the dawn of time were 5.25”)

[proxy_user]

What will the pricing be like? Most data centers are going to go with the cheapest solutions.

[GraceG]

So two of these should theoretically store a human mind est... 27TB

[Resettozero]

No one will ever need more than 64K.

And don't you let Bill Gates ever forget it either!

[Norm Lenhart]

I don’t go mack that far but I remember several hundred bucks for a 128 Meg drive for my Amiga 1200...which I filled with 3D animation rather Quickly, Mr. Gates’ assertions to the contrary ;)

[Norm Lenhart]

That really needs to be etched in his tombstone.

[hosepipe]

WHOA..

[null and void]

One could put a lot of eggs in that basket!

[unixfox]

Believe it or not, I used to work on those drives.

Those were the days.

[Justa]

“What will the pricing be like?”

Should be in Wal-Mart by Christmas.

/s

[P-Marlowe]

The bigger they are, the harder they crash.

[JoeProBono]

[RayChuang88]

Within five years, there won't be spinning hard drives anymore on laptop and desktop computers. They'll all be 1 to 4 terabyte SSD's, either using improved versions of today's SSD technology or the Intel/Micron 3D XPoint technology. And that means when you do a cold boot of Windows or MacOS X, the boot time will be measured in around 12 to 20 seconds from start to finish.