Samsung recently announced volume production of a new lineup of SSDs using the fast SATA 3 (6Gb/s) interface and will be available in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities. The new SSDs are called the PM830 series, and Samsung expects the drives to replace their SATA 2 (3Gb/s) drives by year-end.
Wanhoon Hong, executive vice president, memory sales & marketing, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics stated that Samsung’s new SSDs "will raise the performance bar to the next level for ultra-slim notebooks and tablets." In addition, he believes that the new high capacity drives will spur competition in that segment and increase market interest in SSDs with greater-than 256GB capacities.
The new PM830 drives use Samsung’s 20nm class (their term for a process node somewhere between 20 and 29), 32 Gigabit MLC NAND flash with a toggle DDR interface in addition to a proprietary controller. Samsung claims that the controller and flash are able to take advantage of the SATA 6Gb/s interface by delivering 500MB/s sequential read speeds and 350MB/s sequential write speeds. Further, the drive uses AES 256-bit encryption to secure private and corporate data.
The new SATA 6Gb/s solid state drives are targeted at OEMs for use in notebooks and tablets. They are currently only available to OEMs; however, a consumer variant of the drive is forthcoming and will be announced at a later date.
