First Samsung TLC 20nm NAND SSD Benchmarks

Samsung’s new 840 SSD product line is powered by the company’s new MDX controller that is basically the hero of the new 840 series. The company has just wrapped up its first edition of the SSD Global Summit in Seoul yesterday and gave out the first Samsung 840 TLC NAND SSDs.

We reported here on the new 840 series and we unveiled the performance characteristics and specification here, but all the drives that were available at the time were Samsung 840 Pro SSD and the “Pro” line is still using regular MLC NAND.

Only the basic Samsung 840 drives are made using TLC NAND and only now we’ve spotted the first performance results of the new technology from the Korean company.

TLC is short for triple level cell, but it’s simpler to say that each TLC NAND cell is able to hold three bits of data while MLC was only able to record two bits.

Therefore, a TLC NAND flash chip will hold 50% more data than an MLC NAND flash chip with the same number of cells.

Such an increase in density is quite an achievement as it is a logical / design based development and not a result of physically shrinking the cell size.

To make things even more impressive, Samsung has also moved to 21nm NAND manufacturing technology so the density can increase even more.

One important aspect that Samsung has emphasized in its description of the TLC SSD is that these are considerably slower when writing data and to keep the performance on a competitive level, there is a lot of work that needs to be done in the controller and in the firmware.

Hardware experts at Anandtech.com have managed to get their hands on a TLC-based Samsung 840 SSD drive and after, a short testing session, the performance results that were supposed to represent a mid-range product have amazed everybody.

In a write-heavy test, the Samsung 840 TLC drive is right in line with the best of the best and that’s quite an achievement for a mid-range product as the ones competing against it are high-end drives like the OCZ Vertex 4 or the Plextor M5 Pro.

In a more read-oriented test, the new technology is better than any SSD out on the market with its bigger 840 Pro brother being the only one with a superior showing.

This is the most impressive aspect of all as, for the average user, the performance of the affordable device is more important than what the top of the line can do.