At California's Flash Memory Summit, Samsung unveiled a 16 terabyte solid state disk drive. The PM1633a is mouthful to pronounce, but it holds the distinction of being the world's biggest hard drive.
The product is being targeted at Business and Enterprise consumers, but it should be a matter of time before the new technology powering the record breaking gadget finds its way onto consumer drives. Ars Technica has a breakdown of the innovations behind the massive storage:
"The secret sauce behind Samsung's 16TB SSD is the company's new 256Gbit (32GB) NAND flash die; twice the capacity of 128Gbit NAND dies that were commercialized by various chip makers last year. To reach such an astonishing density, Samsung has managed to cram 48 layers of 3-bits-per-cell (TLC) 3D V-NAND into a single die. This is up from 24 layers in 2013, and then 36 layers in 2014."
The PM1633a's nearly doubles the capacity of it's closest competitors, who come in at around 8 - 10 terabytes. What's even more impressive is that it comes in a compact 2.5 inch form factor.
Samsung announced the new tech by demonstrating a server running 48 of these new hard drives at the event. It was able to handle up to 2 million input/output operations each second, far more than the 90,000 that the average consumer solid-state drive can muster at the moment.
No pricing on this drive has yet to be announced but Ars Technica estimates it will be in the region of $5000.
This news comes hot on the heels of the company's big smartphone announcement. Today it also unveiled the latest versions of its flagship Note and Galaxy S series devices, The Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge+. The two devices borrow heavily from Samsung's other flagship, the Galaxy S6, which released earlier this year.
