Samsung Solid State Drives: Gaining Momentum
As time goes by, everything changes around and technology is no exception. A few years ago, hosting on solid-state drives was a novelty, but now it is already the norm. Not so long ago, even a small amount of SSD drives cost good money, because hosters, as a rule, provided “hybrid” SSD hosting for savings: they placed customer databases on solid-state drives, and the rest of the site files on regular hard drives. When SSD drives became more accessible, companies began to transfer their hosting infrastructure completely to solid-state drives. High throughput and low transaction latency dictate to many data centers to opt for using solid-state drives (SSD), instead of hard drives (HDD). In turn, this avoids performance delays, increases the efficiency and reliability of the server farm, and also makes it possible to reduce operating costs. We have not become an exception and have been providing virtual hosting on an ultra-fast SSD for quite some time.
Often, choosing the right SSD for a data center is a long and complicated process, you need to study and evaluate many different vendors, types of SSDs, since it is known that not all drives on the market and types of NAND flash memory are the same. The wrong choice of solid-state drives for long-term use on server farms is fraught with not only financial negative consequences. The drive may fail prematurely, the constant write speed will decrease, while the delays in the drive array, on the contrary, will increase.
Many of our servers that we provide customers use Samsung solid state drives. Back in 2014, Samsung Electronics announced the start of mass production of the first 3D NAND flash memory (known as V-NAND) in the 850 Pro and 850 EVO SATA SSD series. SSD 850 Pro became the first serial flash drive, which was made on the basis of 32-layer technology MLC 3D V-NAND.
')
Until 2013, Samsung Electronics was the only SSD manufacturer on the TLC NAND. The well-known 840 EVO model with 19 nm TLC NAND and a 128 Gbit crystal density has been successfully at the top of the market since 2011. At the moment, the company is deserved to be not only the leader in the production of consumer SSDs, but also the main innovator in this field. Surely you can say that over the past few years, Samsung has conquered this market. According to the Trendfocus analytical company, the company's share reached almost 40% of the global market for the production of solid-state drives.
One of the first solid-state drives that brought the Samsung product to, so to speak, the “gold standard” were the SSD series 830 (2011) and 840 Pro (2014). These products quickly occupied their niche and received the title of the best SATA SSD for high-performance personal computers of the upper price segment. For mass users, the 840 and 840 EVO series drives were released. Innovation was the use of three-bit TLC NAND in drives. Thanks to the use of this technology, the cost of the product was significantly reduced, and the company was ahead of its competitors for a couple of years. The MDX and TLC NAND controller developed by the company ensured high performance of the model 840 PRO.
Over time, Samsung launched into serial production a three-dimensional flash memory, known as 3D V-NAND. Thanks to it, the problem of scalability of flash memory crystals was solved, and further increasing the density of data storage in crystals was made possible by placing cells in three planes. As already mentioned, in 2014, Samsung Electronics announced the start of mass production of the first 3D NAND flash memory in the 850 Pro and 850 EVO SATA SSD series. In turn, SSD 850 Pro became the first serial flash drive, which was made on the basis of 32-layer technology MLC 3D V-NAND.
During use, 3D V-NAND technology has shown itself from the best side, due to the location of the memory cells in the stack, the chip area is used more efficiently, and more memory cells can be located on the chip. The first generation V-NAND has 24 vertically stacked layers of memory cells, the second generation - 32, and the third generation - 48. By the way, using SSD servers based on the first generation V-NAND improved performance by 20 percent and doubled the reliability. This was the impetus for the following innovative developments of the second and third generation V-NAND.
SSD Series 850 Pro (based on 32-layer MLC 3D V-NAND) is characterized by a significant increase in performance and reliability. If we talk about its value, then it is quite high. Therefore, the company took up the development of a mass product that could combine high performance, reliability, but remain affordable. So saw the light of SSD Series 850 EVO, a three-dimensional flash memory which combined multi-layer 3D V-NAND and TLC NAND architecture.
At the moment, 850 PRO and 850 EVO older volumes are two different products. The 850 PRO uses two-bit MLC memory, and the 850 EVO uses three-bit TLC.
The 850 series of solid-state drives has been constantly evolving, in 2015, the company released a 2 TB SSD. The capacity of the 32-layer MLC V-NAND semiconductor crystals used in the 850 Pro has grown from 86 Gbps to 128 Gbps. At 850 EVO capacity remained the same -128 Gbps. Such a capacity of 850 EVO crystals was explained earlier by writing to each cell not two, but three bits of information.
Later in 2015, Samsung announced the start of mass production of V-NAND 3D flash memory chips with a capacity of 256 Gbps. They use the third generation V-NAND - 48-layer three-bit TLC memory. Through the use of used semiconductor crystals with a capacity of 256 Gbit on a single substrate, it became possible to produce SSD with a capacity of several terabytes. At the beginning of 2016, it was planned to transfer the already existing 850 and 950 series to the use of the V-NAND of the new third generation. But the transition to new technologies was not so fast in practice.
The 850 EVO series drives have been updated with the third generation TLC 3D V-NAND (the number of layers and the capacity of the crystals have increased). It should be noted that for the production of the third generation TLC 3D V-NAND, a more subtle technical process was used.
The third-generation TLC 3D V-NAND flash memory chips of the third generation consume 30% less energy than their predecessors, but at the same time they are 40% smaller in size, which made it possible to reduce the cost of storage.
The use of the third generation 48-layer TLC 3D V-NAND allowed to increase the capacity of the solid-state drive up to 4 TB while maintaining the usual form factor (2.5 inches). In the 850 series solid-state drives with a capacity of up to 1 TB, the MGX controller was used, and the 2 and 4 TB used the MHX. The MHX controller, which was used in SSD 850 EVO 2 TB, supports 4 GB of DRAM memory, because it was also used in SSD 850 EVO 4 TB. In 850 EVO v2 DRAM comes with a more modern type of memory standard LPDDR3. At the same time, its size remained the same, for each gigabyte of storage capacity there is 1 MB of buffer capacity.
It would seem that with the growth of the technical characteristics of the solid-state drive, namely, the capacity from 1 TB to 4 TB, the data transfer rate should also increase. But, as we see with the advent of 4 TB, the Samsung 850 EVO is able to read and write data at a speed close to the bandwidth limit of the SATA 6 Gb / s interface, which is identical to the 850 EVO versions of 500 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB. The maximum random read / write speed is 98000/90000 I / O operations per second (input / output operations per second) for blocks of 4 KB. The power consumption of such a drive is 3.1 / 3.6 W during active read / write operations.
A few words about the warranty resource SSD 850 EVO drive 4 TB. Samsung provides a 5-year warranty for these drives or 300 TB of recording, it does not come out more than SSD 850 EVO 2 TB, so there is nothing to please users at this moment. At the same time, thanks to the new third-generation V-NAND, four-terabyte solid-state drives will be pleased with some innovations. In addition to having increased the number of levels from 32 to 48, a few changes were made to the development called charge trap used in the V-NAND (in the design of the planar NAND flash memory using a floating gate transistor) : an additional metal layer was added between the compounds, the I / O placement area on the crystal became more elaborate and compact, with the result that the cell density increased from 1.86 Gbit / mm ^ 2 for 32-level TLC to 2.6 Gbit / mm ^ 2 for 48-level TLC in 4 TB 850 EVO SSD.
Another “trick” of Samsung is F-Chip, which the company presented at the ISSCC in 2015. Basically, the hardware architecture of solid-state drives consists of a controller, NAND flash memory and DRAM. F-Chip works on the same principle as FB-DIMMs (Fully Buffered Dual In-Line Memory Module) for DRAM. Recall that the FB-DIMM is a new type of server memory, which, while reducing the number of conductors, significantly increases the frequency of the modules and, thanks to the serial interface, increases the total memory on the server, each FB-DIMM module contains an Advanced Memory Buffer chip, it performs high-speed buffering and conversion all signals, not only data but also address transmission. So, instead of directly connecting the SSD controller to the stack of NAND crystals using a multi-point bus, an F-Chip interface is used that connects the SSD with two groups of 4 NAND crystals. Due to the fact that a small F-Chip includes the same BGA package as the NAND stack, only 4 chips are used to connect to NAND instead of 8 or 16. The F-Chip occupied area is 0.057 mm ^ 2.
Compare it with corporate SSD, the performance and performance of which is an order of magnitude higher than that of consumer systems? It would also not quite right. Solid state drives of such capacity, as a rule, are designed for servers and data centers, they support a number of technologies that increase reliability and performance, and, consequently, their price is higher. For example, the PM863 (SATA) drive from Samsung with a capacity of 3.84 TB costs about $ 2,200, and the PM1633 (SAS) 3.84 TB in the market starts at $ 3,092. It is no secret that the limit on the price of solid-state drives of higher performance, capacity and endurance can vary ("infinity is not the limit"). Companies have already presented on the market 2.5-inch SSD with a volume of more than 10 TB, the price, respectively, is over $ 10,000, for $ 20,000 and more expensive, you can order specialized solutions. Therefore, $ 1,500 for the Samsung SSD 850 EVO 4TB is quite bearable and even profitable.
Last year, Samsung announced its fourth generation 64-layer 3D NAND. This fourth generation V-NAND is currently in mass production and will be available in many product segments in the coming months. Most products will use either 256 GB or 512 GB TLC-matrix.
64-layer 256 Gbps V-NAND and 1-TB M.2 SSD chips
Compared to the third-generation 48-layer V-NAND, the 64-layer V-NAND provides the same read performance, but demonstrates 11% better performance in write operations. Improved energy consumption. Samsung claims that their 64-layer TLC V-NAND is rated from 7,000 to 20,000 total read / write cycles. The manufacture of 64-layer chips of 256 GB indicates that Samsung is currently increasing the production of its fourth-generation V-NAND chips, it is logical to expect new products based on such chips (for example, SSD, memory cards, etc.).
Last week, Samsung announced a 96-layer fifth-generation V-NAND. Samsung's fifth-generation flash memory is QLC NAND (it can store four bits in one cell) with a capacity of 128 GB.
Also, Samsung has introduced an updated version of Z-NAND memory, the advantage of which is to provide less delay than in the existing flash memory. A modification of the existing 3D architecture of V-NAND based on SLC-cells gives read latency - 3µs, which provides 15 times higher speed compared to V-NAND flash memory (MLC or TLC). Their first product built by Z-NAND is the Z-SSD SZ985 with a total delay for read operations of less than 15µs. The Z-SSD SZ985 is 5.5 times faster than high-performance, enterprise-class SSD based on TLC. Samsung introduced the second generation Z-NAND, based on the MLC NAND instead of the SLC. Although the latency for read operations is 5µs, instead of 3µs, but a large storage density is provided. In addition to the promising Z-NAND memory technology, the company is working on memory technologies based on phase transition and ST-MRAM magnetoresistive memory.
Among the presented SSDs (based on the above-mentioned V-NAND technologies) is a 128-bit 2.5-inch SAS SSD based on the QLC V-NAND. The crystals will be packaged in 32-crystal structures (stacks), and this SSD is placed in a BGA type case.
Samsung has previously presented a form factor for enterprise-class SSD, which is currently called NGSFF. A printed circuit board with a size of 30.5 mm x 110 mm is much wider than common form factors M.2. Due to the fact that the printed circuit board is built on a metal base, hot-swappable storage is possible. Samsung demonstrated a 1U server, codenamed “Mission Peak,” where the total capacity of the 36 SSD drives of the PM983 in the NGSFF form factor was 576 TB, each 16 TB SSD.
Samsung is developing a new technology key / value, with which the SSD when processing does not transform data into blocks. The very name of the technology speaks for itself - the “key” key provides the ability to directly address the location of data, we end up with scalable performance and capacity parameters, increasing data entry and output speeds. Samsung's Solice SSD supports NVMe 1.3 Controller Memory Buffer and IO Determinism, which will avoid blocking operations with one set, operations with another set.
Time does not stand still, the creation and introduction of new technologies, respectively, too. The market in our time presents a variety of proposals that will optimally satisfy any user. Everything is limited only by your needs and abilities.
As advertising. Stock! Only now get up to 4 months of free use of VPS (KVM) with dedicated drives in the Netherlands and the USA (configurations from VPS (KVM) - E5-2650v4 (6 Cores) / 10GB DDR4 / 240GB SSD or 4TB HDD / 1Gbps 10TB - $ 29 / month and above, options with RAID1 and RAID10 are available) , a full-fledged analogue of dedicated servers, when ordering for a period of 1-12 months, the conditions of the promotion are here, existing subscribers can get 2 months bonus!
How to build the infrastructure of the building. class c using servers Dell R730xd E5-2650 v4 worth 9000 euros for a penny?
Often, choosing the right SSD for a data center is a long and complicated process, you need to study and evaluate many different vendors, types of SSDs, since it is known that not all drives on the market and types of NAND flash memory are the same. The wrong choice of solid-state drives for long-term use on server farms is fraught with not only financial negative consequences. The drive may fail prematurely, the constant write speed will decrease, while the delays in the drive array, on the contrary, will increase.
Many of our servers that we provide customers use Samsung solid state drives. Back in 2014, Samsung Electronics announced the start of mass production of the first 3D NAND flash memory (known as V-NAND) in the 850 Pro and 850 EVO SATA SSD series. SSD 850 Pro became the first serial flash drive, which was made on the basis of 32-layer technology MLC 3D V-NAND.
')
Until 2013, Samsung Electronics was the only SSD manufacturer on the TLC NAND. The well-known 840 EVO model with 19 nm TLC NAND and a 128 Gbit crystal density has been successfully at the top of the market since 2011. At the moment, the company is deserved to be not only the leader in the production of consumer SSDs, but also the main innovator in this field. Surely you can say that over the past few years, Samsung has conquered this market. According to the Trendfocus analytical company, the company's share reached almost 40% of the global market for the production of solid-state drives.
One of the first solid-state drives that brought the Samsung product to, so to speak, the “gold standard” were the SSD series 830 (2011) and 840 Pro (2014). These products quickly occupied their niche and received the title of the best SATA SSD for high-performance personal computers of the upper price segment. For mass users, the 840 and 840 EVO series drives were released. Innovation was the use of three-bit TLC NAND in drives. Thanks to the use of this technology, the cost of the product was significantly reduced, and the company was ahead of its competitors for a couple of years. The MDX and TLC NAND controller developed by the company ensured high performance of the model 840 PRO.
Over time, Samsung launched into serial production a three-dimensional flash memory, known as 3D V-NAND. Thanks to it, the problem of scalability of flash memory crystals was solved, and further increasing the density of data storage in crystals was made possible by placing cells in three planes. As already mentioned, in 2014, Samsung Electronics announced the start of mass production of the first 3D NAND flash memory in the 850 Pro and 850 EVO SATA SSD series. In turn, SSD 850 Pro became the first serial flash drive, which was made on the basis of 32-layer technology MLC 3D V-NAND.
During use, 3D V-NAND technology has shown itself from the best side, due to the location of the memory cells in the stack, the chip area is used more efficiently, and more memory cells can be located on the chip. The first generation V-NAND has 24 vertically stacked layers of memory cells, the second generation - 32, and the third generation - 48. By the way, using SSD servers based on the first generation V-NAND improved performance by 20 percent and doubled the reliability. This was the impetus for the following innovative developments of the second and third generation V-NAND.
SSD Series 850 Pro (based on 32-layer MLC 3D V-NAND) is characterized by a significant increase in performance and reliability. If we talk about its value, then it is quite high. Therefore, the company took up the development of a mass product that could combine high performance, reliability, but remain affordable. So saw the light of SSD Series 850 EVO, a three-dimensional flash memory which combined multi-layer 3D V-NAND and TLC NAND architecture.
At the moment, 850 PRO and 850 EVO older volumes are two different products. The 850 PRO uses two-bit MLC memory, and the 850 EVO uses three-bit TLC.
The 850 series of solid-state drives has been constantly evolving, in 2015, the company released a 2 TB SSD. The capacity of the 32-layer MLC V-NAND semiconductor crystals used in the 850 Pro has grown from 86 Gbps to 128 Gbps. At 850 EVO capacity remained the same -128 Gbps. Such a capacity of 850 EVO crystals was explained earlier by writing to each cell not two, but three bits of information.
Later in 2015, Samsung announced the start of mass production of V-NAND 3D flash memory chips with a capacity of 256 Gbps. They use the third generation V-NAND - 48-layer three-bit TLC memory. Through the use of used semiconductor crystals with a capacity of 256 Gbit on a single substrate, it became possible to produce SSD with a capacity of several terabytes. At the beginning of 2016, it was planned to transfer the already existing 850 and 950 series to the use of the V-NAND of the new third generation. But the transition to new technologies was not so fast in practice.
The 850 EVO series drives have been updated with the third generation TLC 3D V-NAND (the number of layers and the capacity of the crystals have increased). It should be noted that for the production of the third generation TLC 3D V-NAND, a more subtle technical process was used.
The third-generation TLC 3D V-NAND flash memory chips of the third generation consume 30% less energy than their predecessors, but at the same time they are 40% smaller in size, which made it possible to reduce the cost of storage.
The use of the third generation 48-layer TLC 3D V-NAND allowed to increase the capacity of the solid-state drive up to 4 TB while maintaining the usual form factor (2.5 inches). In the 850 series solid-state drives with a capacity of up to 1 TB, the MGX controller was used, and the 2 and 4 TB used the MHX. The MHX controller, which was used in SSD 850 EVO 2 TB, supports 4 GB of DRAM memory, because it was also used in SSD 850 EVO 4 TB. In 850 EVO v2 DRAM comes with a more modern type of memory standard LPDDR3. At the same time, its size remained the same, for each gigabyte of storage capacity there is 1 MB of buffer capacity.
It would seem that with the growth of the technical characteristics of the solid-state drive, namely, the capacity from 1 TB to 4 TB, the data transfer rate should also increase. But, as we see with the advent of 4 TB, the Samsung 850 EVO is able to read and write data at a speed close to the bandwidth limit of the SATA 6 Gb / s interface, which is identical to the 850 EVO versions of 500 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB. The maximum random read / write speed is 98000/90000 I / O operations per second (input / output operations per second) for blocks of 4 KB. The power consumption of such a drive is 3.1 / 3.6 W during active read / write operations.
A few words about the warranty resource SSD 850 EVO drive 4 TB. Samsung provides a 5-year warranty for these drives or 300 TB of recording, it does not come out more than SSD 850 EVO 2 TB, so there is nothing to please users at this moment. At the same time, thanks to the new third-generation V-NAND, four-terabyte solid-state drives will be pleased with some innovations. In addition to having increased the number of levels from 32 to 48, a few changes were made to the development called charge trap used in the V-NAND (in the design of the planar NAND flash memory using a floating gate transistor) : an additional metal layer was added between the compounds, the I / O placement area on the crystal became more elaborate and compact, with the result that the cell density increased from 1.86 Gbit / mm ^ 2 for 32-level TLC to 2.6 Gbit / mm ^ 2 for 48-level TLC in 4 TB 850 EVO SSD.
Another “trick” of Samsung is F-Chip, which the company presented at the ISSCC in 2015. Basically, the hardware architecture of solid-state drives consists of a controller, NAND flash memory and DRAM. F-Chip works on the same principle as FB-DIMMs (Fully Buffered Dual In-Line Memory Module) for DRAM. Recall that the FB-DIMM is a new type of server memory, which, while reducing the number of conductors, significantly increases the frequency of the modules and, thanks to the serial interface, increases the total memory on the server, each FB-DIMM module contains an Advanced Memory Buffer chip, it performs high-speed buffering and conversion all signals, not only data but also address transmission. So, instead of directly connecting the SSD controller to the stack of NAND crystals using a multi-point bus, an F-Chip interface is used that connects the SSD with two groups of 4 NAND crystals. Due to the fact that a small F-Chip includes the same BGA package as the NAND stack, only 4 chips are used to connect to NAND instead of 8 or 16. The F-Chip occupied area is 0.057 mm ^ 2.
Compare it with corporate SSD, the performance and performance of which is an order of magnitude higher than that of consumer systems? It would also not quite right. Solid state drives of such capacity, as a rule, are designed for servers and data centers, they support a number of technologies that increase reliability and performance, and, consequently, their price is higher. For example, the PM863 (SATA) drive from Samsung with a capacity of 3.84 TB costs about $ 2,200, and the PM1633 (SAS) 3.84 TB in the market starts at $ 3,092. It is no secret that the limit on the price of solid-state drives of higher performance, capacity and endurance can vary ("infinity is not the limit"). Companies have already presented on the market 2.5-inch SSD with a volume of more than 10 TB, the price, respectively, is over $ 10,000, for $ 20,000 and more expensive, you can order specialized solutions. Therefore, $ 1,500 for the Samsung SSD 850 EVO 4TB is quite bearable and even profitable.
A few words about the innovations from Samsung
2016 year
Last year, Samsung announced its fourth generation 64-layer 3D NAND. This fourth generation V-NAND is currently in mass production and will be available in many product segments in the coming months. Most products will use either 256 GB or 512 GB TLC-matrix.
64-layer 256 Gbps V-NAND and 1-TB M.2 SSD chips
Compared to the third-generation 48-layer V-NAND, the 64-layer V-NAND provides the same read performance, but demonstrates 11% better performance in write operations. Improved energy consumption. Samsung claims that their 64-layer TLC V-NAND is rated from 7,000 to 20,000 total read / write cycles. The manufacture of 64-layer chips of 256 GB indicates that Samsung is currently increasing the production of its fourth-generation V-NAND chips, it is logical to expect new products based on such chips (for example, SSD, memory cards, etc.).
2017 year
Last week, Samsung announced a 96-layer fifth-generation V-NAND. Samsung's fifth-generation flash memory is QLC NAND (it can store four bits in one cell) with a capacity of 128 GB.
Also, Samsung has introduced an updated version of Z-NAND memory, the advantage of which is to provide less delay than in the existing flash memory. A modification of the existing 3D architecture of V-NAND based on SLC-cells gives read latency - 3µs, which provides 15 times higher speed compared to V-NAND flash memory (MLC or TLC). Their first product built by Z-NAND is the Z-SSD SZ985 with a total delay for read operations of less than 15µs. The Z-SSD SZ985 is 5.5 times faster than high-performance, enterprise-class SSD based on TLC. Samsung introduced the second generation Z-NAND, based on the MLC NAND instead of the SLC. Although the latency for read operations is 5µs, instead of 3µs, but a large storage density is provided. In addition to the promising Z-NAND memory technology, the company is working on memory technologies based on phase transition and ST-MRAM magnetoresistive memory.
Among the presented SSDs (based on the above-mentioned V-NAND technologies) is a 128-bit 2.5-inch SAS SSD based on the QLC V-NAND. The crystals will be packaged in 32-crystal structures (stacks), and this SSD is placed in a BGA type case.
Samsung has previously presented a form factor for enterprise-class SSD, which is currently called NGSFF. A printed circuit board with a size of 30.5 mm x 110 mm is much wider than common form factors M.2. Due to the fact that the printed circuit board is built on a metal base, hot-swappable storage is possible. Samsung demonstrated a 1U server, codenamed “Mission Peak,” where the total capacity of the 36 SSD drives of the PM983 in the NGSFF form factor was 576 TB, each 16 TB SSD.
Samsung is developing a new technology key / value, with which the SSD when processing does not transform data into blocks. The very name of the technology speaks for itself - the “key” key provides the ability to directly address the location of data, we end up with scalable performance and capacity parameters, increasing data entry and output speeds. Samsung's Solice SSD supports NVMe 1.3 Controller Memory Buffer and IO Determinism, which will avoid blocking operations with one set, operations with another set.
Time does not stand still, the creation and introduction of new technologies, respectively, too. The market in our time presents a variety of proposals that will optimally satisfy any user. Everything is limited only by your needs and abilities.
As advertising. Stock! Only now get up to 4 months of free use of VPS (KVM) with dedicated drives in the Netherlands and the USA (configurations from VPS (KVM) - E5-2650v4 (6 Cores) / 10GB DDR4 / 240GB SSD or 4TB HDD / 1Gbps 10TB - $ 29 / month and above, options with RAID1 and RAID10 are available) , a full-fledged analogue of dedicated servers, when ordering for a period of 1-12 months, the conditions of the promotion are here, existing subscribers can get 2 months bonus!
How to build the infrastructure of the building. class c using servers Dell R730xd E5-2650 v4 worth 9000 euros for a penny?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/309954/
All Articles