Samsung Electronics is mass-producing a consumer 4TB QLC SATA SSD based on 1Tb 4-bit V-NAND. This product achieves performance and operational characteristics equivalent to existing high-performance TLC SSDs and is expected to lead the growth of the ultra-high capacity market in the consumer SSD sector.

Samsung Electronics, which created the industry's first PC SSD market by launching a 32GB 1-bit (SLC, Single Level Cell) SSD in 2006, is driving demand in the SSD market by mass-producing 4-bit (QLC, Quad Level Cell) SSDs for the first time in the industry starting this July, following 2-bit (MLC, Multi Level Cell) SSDs in 2010 and 3-bit (TLC, Triple Level Cell) SSDs in 2012.

QLC (4-bit) is a technology that stores 4-bit binary data in a single cell. When the data stored in a single cell is increased from the existing 3 bits to 4 bits, the storage capacity can be increased by as much as 33% within the same chip size.

However, as the number of data cases that a single cell must distinguish increases from 8 to 16, the charge per unit (total sum of stored electrons) is reduced to half the level, requiring more precise control. In other words, the technical difficulty of achieving peak product performance and continuously maintaining speed is rapidly increasing.

Samsung Electronics manufactured a 4TB SSD using 32 4th generation (64-layer) 1Tb QLC V-NAND chips and achieved a read speed of 540MB/s and a write speed of 520MB/s for the '4TB QLC SATA SSD' by utilizing an existing high-performance TLC SSD controller and TurboWrite technology. This is equivalent to the performance of existing high-performance TLC SSDs.

Meanwhile, the 1Tb 4-bit V-NAND is expected to contribute significantly to the popularization of high-performance, high-capacity storage in the future, as it can produce a high-performance 128GB memory card for smartphones using just a single chip.

"The newly launched consumer QLC SSD will lead the popularization of terabyte SSDs," emphasized Han Jae-soo, Vice President of Strategy Marketing Team at Samsung Electronics' Memory Business Division. "In the future, as application areas expand from the consumer market to the enterprise market, the proportion of terabyte SSD products will increase rapidly."

Samsung Electronics plans to release three models this year, including 1, 2, and 4TB, as part of its consumer 2.5-inch QLC SSD lineup.

In addition, while successively launching enterprise M.2 NVMe SSDs, we plan to continuously expand our QLC SSD lineup through the mass production of 5th generation (9x-layer) QLC V-NAND with improved performance and characteristics, and respond without disruption to the increasing demand from various customers.