Seoul Aug 7 (IANS) Setting the stage for rolling out advanced memory technology to meet the growing demand for faster more reliable performance across a wide span of applications Samsung on Tuesday said it began mass producing the industry s first 4-bit SATA solid-state drive (SSD) for consumers.
The South Korean tech giant said it would launch several 4-bit consumer SSDs later this year with 1TB (terabyte) 2TB and 4TB capacities in the widely used 2.5-inch form factor.
The new 4-bit quad-level cell (QLC) SSD is expected to bring a new level of efficiency to consumer SSDs.
"Samsung s new 4-bit SATA SSD will herald a massive move to terabyte-SSDs for consumers " said Jaesoo Han Executive Vice President of Memory Sales and Marketing at Samsung Electronics.
"As we expand our line-up across consumer segments and to the enterprise 4-bit terabyte-SSD products will rapidly spread throughout the entire market " Han added.
Typically as data stored within a memory cell increases from three bits to four the chip capacity per unit area would rise and the electrical charge (used to determine information from a sensor) would decrease by as much as 50 per cent making it considerably more difficult to maintain a device s desired performance and speed.
However Samsung s 4-bit 4TB QLC SATA SSD maintains its performance levels at the same level as a 3-bit SSD by using a 3-bit SSD controller and TurboWrite technology according to the company.
With its new 1Tb 4-bit V-NAND chip Samsung said it will be able to efficiently produce a 128GB memory card for smartphones that will lead the charge toward higher capacities for high-performance memory storage.

--IANS gb/mr