Samsung is working on QLC-powered consumer and server SSDs

Every major NAND provider is now working on 4-bits per cell QLC NAND, and Samsung is no exception. At their SSD Forum in Japan, Samsung has released details regarding their future QLC-powered server and consumer drives, promising competitive pricing and high capacities.

QLC NAND offers users 33% more storage than TLC NAND per cell, providing end users increased levels of capacity per unit cost, assuming that silicon yield remains comparable. The sacrifice is that this new NAND type offers slower write times than TLC, making TLC and MLC NAND better suited for specific workloads, even so, QLC NAND is well suited to WORM-type (Write Once, Read Many) workloads. 

Anandtech has reported that Samsung has plans to create both consumer and enterprise-level QLC SSDs that are based on the company’s 96-layer V-NAND technology, with SATA-based client SSDs and SAS/U.2-based server products.   

On the enterprise side, Samsung states that their drives will be able to offer sequential read speeds of 2500MB/s and 160K random read IOPS, easily outperforming HDD-based storage arrays. On the consumer-side, Samsung expects their QLC-based SSDs to saturate the SATA interface, offering users 540 MB/s sequential read speeds and 520 MB/s sequential write speeds. 

With QLC NAND, Samsung expects 1TB consumer SSDs to become more mainstream, thanks to the cost advantages of QLC NAND, though the high-cost of QLC controllers will likely make low-capacity QLC drives non-existant. QLC SSDs require powerful controllers to guarantee high endurance levels.

Samsung has disclosed a release timeframe for their planned QLC-powered SSDs.