Samsung will soon release PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs with 176-Layer V-NAND memory

Intel’s Alder Lake platform launching in late 2021 will be the first to support the PCIe 5.0 standard. When this feature was confirmed by Intel at Computex, we were not really sure if it would have any impact, since no one announced any components integrating the new standard at the expo. Meanwhile, Samsung stepped up and it looks like we could see some PCIe 5.0 SSDs available by holiday season this year.

Samsung announced that it is ready to start production for the 7th gen 176-layer V-NAND memory chips that will soon be added to its consumer SSD lineup. Thanks to the increased number of layers and the smallest cell size in the industry, the memory chips are now capable of delivering 2 Gbps I/O speeds, and this could be further boosted via the PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0 interfaces. Additionally, the SSD capacities could see a decent bump. Samsung claims that the upcoming SSDs are “optimized for multitasking and huge workloads, such as simultaneous 3D rendering and video editing.” The new V-NAND chips are also 16% more energy efficient and can thus be integrated in data center SSDs. Expect to see an announcement for the Samsung 990-series NVMe SSDs any time now.

The race for memory layers is far from over, and Samsung has already finished designs for the 8th gen V-NAND chips with more than 200 layers. The Korean giant is already envisioning future chips that will integrate more than 1,000 layers, and this will be possible with the use of 3D scaling technology.

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