Jordan O'BrienSamsung is preparing to revolutionise the world of local storage, as the company is reportedly prepping a 16TB SSD for launch in 2016.
At 16TB Samsung’s SSD will be the highest-capacity currently offered in the market and could benefit those who have large libraries of media to deliver to customers.
Unlike HDDs, SSDs are capable of transmitting data much faster and are also a lot safer.
HDDs are at risk from drops due to the spinning disk inside, although SSDs do not face the same concerns.
SSDs deliver up to 100 times greater performance over HDDs, although have often been criticised for their limitations in terms of storage.
They do however have other benefits, including lower power consumption, near silent operation and the fact that they run a lot cooler than HDDs – meaning any device sporting an SSD need not have a fan.
Despite HDDs often boasting more storage than SSDs, which have commonly been limited to just 4TB, Samsung’s SSD will be the largest storage device of any kind.
According to industry sources, Samsung is planning to introduce the 16TB SSD, under the name PM1633a, to the market next year.
Samsung has already shown off the PM1633a at trade shows but it has not yet confirmed when it will begin shipping.
It may have a battle on its hands to be first however, as Sandisk has also announced its intentions to release an 8TB and 16TB SSD in 2016.
“Considering Samsung’s technical capability, I think that it will be possible to commercialize the PM1633a by early next year,” notes Michael Yang, director of the memory and storage research teams at IHS iSuppli.
“Since only one 16 TB-level SSD is required to store the data from as much as four of the latest SSDs combined, the cost needed to build a high-capacity server can be drastically reduced.”
A 16TB SSD will not come cheap however, with industry analysts estimating that pricing will start at around $5,000 (£3,191) to $7,000 (£4,500).
That is a significant premium £ per GB when compared to 4TB HDDs, which can be bought for as little as £89.99.