14 DAY TRIAL // Vertical NAND Flash technology is one of Samsung's primary assets on the solid-state drive market, so it's no wonder that the company is always improving it.
The latest chip is made of 32 vertically stacked cell layers, a significant leap from the 24-layer predecessor.
The new chip, the second generation as it is otherwise called, will be used in SSDs that consume 20% less energy than “planar” memory.
The drives in question will have capacities of 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB. They will be high-end units, premium models even, made for gamers, workstation owners and enterprise customers.
And because the new chips can be produced with the same equipment as the first-generation V-NAND, there are no production efficiency issues or extra expenses to worry about.
Hopefully, this will translate into lower overall prices. Sure, SSDs are expensive by nature, and high-end models most of all, but it would be nice to see at least a mild softening in the general cost of an SSD.
Then again, previously, only data center SSDs were being made with 3D V-NAND, so Samsung will probably focus on quality and capacity, not affordability, at least at first.
So those enthusiast PC-centric 128 GB to 1 TB drives will cost a fair bit. It probably won't take even a week for one to come out.