Samsung wants to boost Ultrabook storage with new SSDs

Samsung has extended its 3D V-NAND flash memory technology into a new pair of 3-bit 850 Evo SSDs designed to fit inside even the slimmest of Ultrabook PCs and may even find their way into Apple's new Macbook.

The mSATA and M.2 versions of the popular 2.5-inch SSD are shipping from today and use the company's proprietary 3D V-NAND technology that stacks 32-layers on top of one another to allow higher density memory in the same small package.

Samsung has packed the mSATA drive with the obvious SATA connection standard and it comes in 1TB, 500GB, 250GB and 120GB capacities, and boasts read speeds of up to 540Mbps and write speeds of up to 520Mbps.

Its M.2 counterpart, meanwhile, has a PCI-e connection, comes in 500GB, 250GB and 120GB capacities and offers read speeds of up to 540Mbps and write speeds of up to 500Mbps.

Both drives have TurboWrite technology that means the 500GB and 1TB offer random write speeds of up to 88K IOPS and random read speeds of up to 97K IOPS.

The pair also feature enhanced reliability with a higher level of sustained performance, AES 256-bit hardware encryption as standard, and an endurance rating of 150 total bytes written for drives with capacities of 500GB and above.

What is 3D V-NAND?

Samsung's new drives are based on the same 3D V-NAND technology of the original SSD 850 Evo, which sees flash memory cells stacked vertically in up to 32 layers to make sure more cells can fit into the same area.

In comparison, the previous generation 840 Evo SSD used 2D planar NAND memory and Samsung claimed back in December that the new 850 Evo has twice the drive endurance and 25% better power efficiency.

In terms of the number of layers, Samsung's 32 was recently outdone by SanDisk and Toshiba's new technology that features 48 layers and both implementations could one day lead to 10TB SSDs becoming a reality.

• Check out our Samsung 850 EVO 500GB review

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