Samsung’s latest solid state drive is super-fast, supporting sequential read speeds up to 1,500 MB/s and write speeds up to 900MB/s. It can also hold a lot of storage: Samsung plans to offer models with up to 512GB of storage.

But the new Samsung PM971-NVMe SSD is tiny: it weighs just 1 gram and measures 20mm x 16mm x 1.5mm. That makes it smaller than an SD card (32mm x 24mm) or a typical postage stamp (24mm x 22mm).

samsung ssd_01

 

While we’re comparing sizes, I should point out there are a few more relevant comparisons: Samsung says the new SSD is about 1/5th the size of an M.2 SSD and 1/100th the size of a 2.5 inch SSD or hard drive… and those are the things it’s most likely to replace.

Long story short, you can expect this tiny, speedy, high capacity storage system to be used in tight spaces such as tablets or ultra-thin laptops.

Samsung says it saved space by putting the V-NAND flash, an LPDDR mobile DRAM chip, and a controller all into a single ball grid array package.

Samsung has begun mass producing the new SSD and plans to deliver versions in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities soon.

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16 replies on “Samsung’s new SSD is smaller than an SD card… but way faster”

  1. Depending on a controller design … configuring these as RAID storage should become very practical in a 2.5″ format.

  2. this article reads terribly. Seriously needs a rewrite with some grammar and maybe also some fact checking. Is it smaller than SD or uSD card? Why is Sandisk mentioned in the beginning? Are you comparing similar Sandisk and Samsung products?

    Seriously. Rewrite it.

    1. Just put it alongside my full-height 5.25 inch 360kb IBM PC floppy disk drive and you’ll feel better about it. 🙂

  3. Damn Daniel! That would flood USB 3.1 I think. I’d be happy to give it a go though when actual 3.1 ports become common.

  4. This is quite the leap in technology, but this looks like the final nail in the coffin for user-replaceable/upgradable SSDs.

    1. Only for mobile centric products, I think… This would be a good replacement for eMMC as long as the price isn’t much higher and there isn’t a significant power cost involved.

      But higher end products should still use the more traditional drives, especially as they continue to push higher capacities that will soon be in the TB range… After all, high capacities are one of the reasons why HDDs are still around… and those larger SSDs will still be able to offer even better performance…

      1. Even there I’d hope Project Ara style technology would take off and allow for swapping components. Google may have significantly hobbled their tech by scaling it back, but it’s a pretty sound idea.

      2. Yeah I’d have to agree, this is far more likely an alternative to eMMC devices than hard drives or conventional SSDs.

      3. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if ultrabooks adopt this technology, with consumers having to lock in their SSD size on purchase. With the increasing reliance on streaming and cloud storage, I doubt it will be a major issue for most customers of that format.

  5. I came here to note that this probably doesn’t include the power controller or the io controller, but impressively it seems that they put all three in a single bga package. Pretty cool, but what interface will they end up using?

    1. Replying to my own comment, I wonder if they plan to integrate into a mainboard using the PCIe lanes directly or instead mount these on NGFF cards and then interface to PCIe

Comments are closed.