Samsung introduces Samsung 850 Pro SSDs with 3D v-nand flash

Samsung launched its first consumer SSDs with 3d-v-nand memory on Tuesday. The consumer drives with stacked flash memory come in variants from 128GB to 1TB on the market and have to compete mainly on performance.

The 850 Pro series SSDs consist of average 2.5″ drives that have 3d-v-nand flash memory as a distinguishing feature. With this type of chips, Samsung stacks multiple layers of memory cells on top of each other, which leads to more efficient designs. This allows, among other things, that Samsung can manufacture the memory in a 3xnm process, which is cheaper and presents fewer technological obstacles than the 21nm or 19nm production of other flash chips, with the advantage that the life of the chips is longer, according to Samsung.

Due to the design of the cells, the 850 Pro drives have better performance than previous SSDs based on conventional flash memory, despite using a larger process, Samsung claims, while also reducing power consumption. The current 3d-v-nand memory has a capacity of 128Gbit, but Samsung says it can significantly increase the capacity in the same process, up to 1Tbit per chip.

In addition, for the first generation of 3D memory, which went into production last year for enterprise drives, 24 layers were stacked and Samsung already manages to stack 32 layers for consumer models. The 850 Pro series will be available this month, with prices that would be in line with those of the 840 Evo series. The first tests show that the 850 Pro SSDs are faster than most SSDs, but not faster than the 840 Evo. The longer lifespan and the extra warranty make the drives suitable for workstations, for example.