Samsung Reveals Industry First 512GB NVMe SSD

Samsung has announced that it has begun mass production on the industry’s first NVMe (non-volatile memory) solid state drive (SSD) in a single ball grid array (BGA) package.

The new PM971-NVMe, which features capacities of up to 512GB, weighs just one gram, measures 20x16x1.5mm, but manages to squeeze in 16 48-layer 256-Gb V-NAND flash chips, one 20-nanometer 4Gb LPDDR4 mobile DRAM, and a high-performance Samsung controller while boasting read/write speeds of 1,500MBps and 900MBps, respectively.

The tiny SSD features random read and write IOPS (input output operations per second) of up to 190K and 150K, respectively, making it 1,500x faster than a hard disk drive (HDD), which has IOPS speeds of 120 random reads.

“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 512GB,” Jung-bae Lee, Senior Vice President of Memory Product Planning & Application Engineering Team for Samsung Electronics, said in a press release. “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.”

So, Samsung’s revolutionary new SSD is tiny, offers 512GB storage, and boast speeds comparable to a standard M.2 SSD. What’s not to love The PM971-NVMe will be available in 512GB, 256GB, and 128GB options, and starts shipping to OEMs today.