Samsung PM1633a is world's largest SSD

Samsung revealed the huge PM1633a solid state drive for the enterprise back in August 2015, during the Flash Memory Summit event. Now, this 15.36 TB SAS drive has finally begun shipping.

Samsung PM1633a is built using no less than 512 256 Gb V-NAND memory chips, which are stacked in 16 layers to form a single 512 GB package. The whole 2.5-inch drive uses a total of 32 such NAND packages. Its predecessor, namely Samsung PM1633, used 128 Gb V-NAND memory. The PM1633 used second generation 32-layer V-NAND memory, while the third generation technology employed by the PM1633a allows up to 48 layers, thus providing improved performance and reliability.

The performance of the PM1633a is impressive, reaching up to 200k IOPS read and 32k IOPS write speeds, as well as transfer speeds of up to 1,200 MB/s. In terms of reliability, the drive supports 1 DWPD (drive writes per day), two to ten times as much as most SATA SSDs that use planar MLC and TLC NAND flash memory.

Later this year, Samsung will also provide smaller variants of the PM1633a, going all the way down to 480 GB.