Samsung Electronics and Sun Microsystems announced yesterday that they had managed to develop a single-level-cell (SLC) NAND flash memory device that was to be used in Solid State Drives. The drives that will feature the new SLC memory are expected to offer much higher endurance levels, compared with any other flash memory device currently available on the market.

According to the two manufactures, the new 8GB SLC device provides a five-fold increase in data write-and-erase cycles over standard SLC flash memory. As Samsung indicates, the new memory, which will be used in the development of SSDs, should considerably increase the lifecycle of any high-transaction data processing server. In order to create the new ultra-endurance server-grade memory, the two companies have worked together for the past several months.

"Sun sees incredible upside to using server grade SLC NAND flash to accelerate customers' applications, and we plan to incorporate this technology into our line of servers and storage," said Michael Cornwell, lead technologist for flash memory at Sun Microsystems.

Samsung also said that its new server-grade SLC memory would bring a boost by 100 times in the number of data transfers per watt, when compared with conventional hard drives, providing a substantial improvement with regard to the power saving features of the new Solid State Drive's.

"We have been working with Sun to develop this new 8Gb server-grade SLC flash memory, which will give IT managers the best in high-density, high-endurance memory design with markedly less energy consumption than we see today. 'Endurance up, power down' is going to be the mantra of IT innovators at enterprises everywhere, and server grade SLC flash is ideally situated to deliver on that equation," said Jim Elliott, vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Semiconductor.

A report from IDC indicates that the global demand for enterprise SSDs is expected to rise to 2.24 million units in 2012.