Samsung has begun mass production of its PM971-NVMe solid state drive (SSD), weighing in at only about 1 gram, for use in next-generation PCs and ultra-slim notebook PCs.
Samsung states that the PM971-NVMe is the industry’s first NVMe PCIe SSD in a single ball grid array (BGA) package, featuring “an extremely compact package that contains all essential SSD components, including NAND flash memory, DRAM and controller, while delivering outstanding performance”.
Configuring in a single BGA package was enabled by combining 16 of Samsung’s 48-layer 256 Gb V-NAND flash chips, one 20-nanometer 4 GB LPDDR4 mobile DRAM chip and a high-performance Samsung controller, Samsung states.
Measuring in at 20 mm x 16 mm x 1.5 mm, the single-package SSD’s volume is approximately a hundredth of a 2.5” SSD or hard disk drive.
The PM971-NVMe enables sequential read and write speeds of up to 1,500 MB/s and 900 MB/s, respectively, when TurboWrite technology is used, with Samsung stating the performance figures can be directly compared to transfer of a 5 GB-equivalent full-HD movie in about 3 seconds or its downloading in about 6 seconds.
The PM971-NVMe is equipped with random read and write IOPS of up to 190K and 150K, respectively.
“Samsung’s new BGA NVMe SSD triples the performance of a typical SATA SSD, in the smallest form factor available, with storage capacity reaching up to 512 GB,” Jung-bae Lee, Samsung Electronics senior vice president, Memory Product Planning & Application Engineering Team, commented.
“The introduction of this small-scale SSD will help global PC companies to make timely launches of slimmer, more stylish computing devices, while offering consumers a more satisfactory computing environment.”
The PM971-NVMe will be available in 512 GB, 256 GB and 128 GB storage options, with Samsung stating that it will start providing the new SSDs to its customers this month worldwide.