When it comes to technology, people have short memories. Most of us barely remember what life was like before we could store a library of information in a device the size of one book, or send it instantly to people half a world away.
It’s easy to forget, then, how remarkable the evolution of data storage technology has been. A generation ago, we produced information on typewriters and stored it in filing cabinets. If we wanted to send a document to a colleague, we picked it up and walked.
Source: Samsung
Paper technology eventually gave way to magnetic tape, which evolved into hard disk drives (HDD), which became the traditional mainstay of computer storage. In recent years, thanks to Samsung’s landmark innovations, the solid state drive (SSD) has emerged as a powerful alternative to HDD that looks destined to become the world’s leading storage technology.
Millions of people have used both HDDs and SSDs to store documents, photos, videos and music – but the difference between them is not always well understood.
An HDD is like a classic record player, and an SDD is like an MP3 player. The HDD uses magnetic discs and a motor, reading the data by spinning the discs, in much the same way as a record player does. The SDD, meanwhile, uses NAND flash to process the data digitally.
What makes that difference so significant? To answer that question, we need to take a closer look at how each technology works.
PC users will be familiar with the airplane-like sound of an HDD spinning up when they ask their computer to perform a task, and the noise of the fan required to keep it cool. An HDD reads and writes data by magnetizing a thin magnetic film known as a platter, and locates files by physically rotating the platter. If the platter reaches a certain speed, it can become noisy and consume a lot of power. This process also has an in-built limitation; no matter how fast a computer’s CPU (central processing unit) and RAM are, if its HDD can’t keep up, the whole system slows down.
SSDs effectively solve this problem. They use NAND flash, which processes data much more quickly than HDDs, and because they don’t require mechanical components like motors, they’re generally quieter, more reliable, and cooler – and therefore consume less power.
Source: Samsung
Samsung believed from a very early stage that SSDs would eventually represent a paradigm shift in storage media technology. Reaching that point involved considerable time and research, and a commitment to spearheading SSD innovation.
In fact, early forms of SSD technology existed back in the 1970s. However, for many years, its large size and high price tag made commercialization prohibitively difficult.
For years, though Samsung was already a market leader, flash memory technology was primarily limited to devices like digital cameras, MP3 players and USB flash drives. Because of costs and other concerns, few companies had considered applying the technology to PCs.
In 2004, the price of NAND flash had fallen below DRAM for the first time1, so Samsung was able to leverage its leadership to develop SSDs that were more price competitive and could be easily applied to consumer notebook PCs. In 2006, the company’s tireless R&D efforts paid off with the landmark release of the first PCs to feature 32GB built-in SSDs: the Sens Q30PLUS Samsung Note and the Sens Q1 ultra-mobile, which were capable of booting up five times faster than their HDD peers.
It was a game-changing moment that marked the birth of the SSD-based computer market. So how has Samsung maintained its key advantage in this market? The answer lies in commitment to innovation, which enables Samsung to develop each component of SSD drives in-house: NAND flash, DRAM, controllers and firmware.
Source: Samsung
Today, in addition to boasting its own unrivaled SSD technology, Samsung has the largest production capacity and market share in the NAND flash market, along with best-in-the-industry controllers and firmware that sustain an SSD’s performance and reliability.
Since 2006, when Samsung became the first company to overcome the limitations of “floating gate” architecture by introducing its Charge Trap Flash design, the company’s consistent innovation has led the market into an era of ultra-high-capacity semiconductors that are defined by terabytes, not gigabytes.
Samsung officially launched its consumer SSD business in 2010. By 2013, the company had redefined the limits of fine processing technology again by developing and commercializing the world’s first 3D V-NAND flash memory. In the same year, Samsung began mass-producing 1TB SSDs for data centers, followed by 15.36TB SSDs in 2016, and 30.72TB in 2018.
That represents an astonishing 1000x increase in storage capacity over Samsung’s first 32GD SSD, in the space of just 12 years.
Today, with SSD sales poised to overtake HHDs for the first time, Samsung’s culture of innovation continues to push the boundaries of flash memory technology to ever-greater heights.
Read More:
Part 1: A History of Innovation
Part 3: Taking Flash Memory Global
Part 4: The Future is Flash
