Samsung has kickstarted production on its next-generation 3D V-NAND memory technology and when it shows up, we could be looking at SSDs that are significantly faster than what we have available currently. Don't expect them to speed up your cable-limited 2.5-inch SATA III SSD, but those considering upgrading to a PCIE-powered NVMe stick of storage, you could be in for a treat.
The fifth-generation V-NAND uses something called a toggle DDR 4.0 interface which quickly shuttles information from the SSD back and forth to on board memory, offering exceptionally fast access to that information as and when required. It could result in an up to 40 percent improvement in read performance for supporting SSDs, and even a 30 percent increase in write speed for those faster game installs and file transfers.
And that's over existing, blazing fast PCIExpress SSDs, which are already a far cry beyond the raw number performance of older SATA drives -- though real world performance between the two standards is less noticeable.
Alongside this new announcement, Samsung also made it clear that it's continuing to develope its quad-level-cell memory technology, which will offer a sizeable increase in reliability too, we're told, and will even be quite affordable compared to traditional hard drives. This is a technology that could eventually see the classic HDD killed off in the general computing space, with SSDs finally reaching parity with the older platter technology.
PCGamesN thinks we'll see a new generation of super-fast SSDs before the end of the year, and possibly the new quad-channel drives within the next few.
