Samsung begins mass production of industry's first 4-bit 4 TB SSD for consumers

Samsung 4 TB QLC SSD (Source: Samsung Newsroom)

The new 4 TB 4-bit QLC SSD by Samsung comes with a 3-year warranty period and has a level of performance similar to the company’s 3-bit design. The new SSD for consumers provides read speeds of up to 540 MB/s and write speeds of up to 520 MB/s. This drive arrives more than a decade after Samsung's 32 GB 1-bit SLC SSD that was introduced in 2006.

Codrut Nistor, 08/08/2018

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Back in 2006, Samsung started the SSD revolution by introducing the 1-bit SLC (single-level cell) memory chips with a capacity of 4 Gb. Sadly, the drives that used them only provided up to 32 GB of storage space. Fast forward to 2018 and we are facing the first 4-bit QLC (quad-level cell) 4 TB drive for consumers that uses fourth-generation V-NAND memory with a chip capacity of 1 Tb.

According to Samsung, the performance levels of the new 4 TB QLC SSD are similar to those provided by the 3-bit TLC (triple-level cell) drives that were introduced back in 2012. For those into technical details, we should mention the following two key figures provided by Samsung: up to 540 MB/s read speed and up to 520 MB/s write speed. The 3-year warranty is nothing out of ordinary, but it is worth mentioning it nevertheless.

Samsung's vice president of memory sales & marketing, Jaesoo Han, thinks that the new 4-bit SATA SSD "will herald a massive move to terabyte-SSDs for consumers." The company plans to provide M.2 NVMe SSDs for the enterprise and to begin mass production of 4-bit fifth-generation V-NAND memory by the end of the year.