Samsung: 8TB NF1 NVMe SSD Based on Next-Gen NF1 Succeeding M.2 Form Factor

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. launched highest capacity NVMe SSD based on the small Next-generation Small Form Factor (NGSFF) ^(*) – an 8TB NF1 ^(**) SSD.

It has been optimized for data-intensive analytics and virtualization applications in next-generation data centers and enterprise server systems.

“By introducing the first NF1 NVMe SSD, Samsung is taking the investment efficiency in data centers to new heights,” said Sewon Chun, SVP, memory marketing, Samsung Electronics. “We will continue to lead the trend toward enabling ultra-high density data centers and enterprise systems by delivering storage solutions with unparalleled performance and density levels.“

This SSD is built with 16 of the company’s 512GB NAND packages, each stacked in 16 layers of 256Gb 3-bit V-NAND chips, achieving an 8TB density in a small footprint of 11×3.05cm. This is twice the capacity offered by the M.2 NVMe SSD (11×2.2cm) commonly used in hyper-scale server designs and ultra-slim laptops. The NF1 SSD is expected to replace conventional 2.5-inch NVMe SSDs by enabling up to three times the system density in existing server infrastructure, allowing for 576TB of storage space in the latest 2U rack servers.

The NF1 SSD features a new controller that supports the NVMe 1.3 protocol and PCIe 4.0 interface, delivering sequential read speeds of 3,100MB/s and write speeds of 2,000MB/s. These speeds are more than five times and three times that of a typical SATA SSD, respectively. Random speeds come in at 500,000 IO/s for read operations and 50,000 IO/s for writes. Utilizing this NF1 storage solution, an enterprise server system can perform over one million IO/s in a 2U rack space, enhancing the ROI for next-generation large-scale data centers. The SSD also includes a 12GB LPDDR4 DRAM to enable faster and more energy-efficient data processing.

To ensure long-term data reliability, the NF1 NVMe SSD has been designed with an endurance level of 1.3 drive write per day (DWPD), which guarantees writing an entire 8TB of data 1.3 times a day over its 3-year warranty period.

The company plans to accompany its 256Gb 3-bit V-NAND-based SSD with a 512Gb version in the second half of this year to accommodate faster processing for big data applications, while also accelerating the growth in next-generation enterprise and mid-market data centers.

^(*) Next-generation Small Form Factor (NGSFF) is the latest SSD standard, which is expected to be standardized by JEDEC in October. It succeeds the M.2 standard and can more than double the space utilization within server systems.
^(**) NGSFF is also referred to as NF1