SK hynix Inc. Ramps Up Enterprise SSDs with its 72-Layer 512Gb 3D NAND Flash

Seoul, February 4, 2018

SK hynix Inc. (or ‘the Company’, www.skhynix.com) today announced that the Company recently completed developing an enterprise SATA Solid State Drive (or ‘eSSD’). With its 72-Layer 512Gb (Gigabits) 3D NAND Flash chips, the Company is paving the way for its full-fledged entrance to the high value-added eSSD market.

SK hynix combined the 72-Layer 512Gb 3D NAND Flash with its in-house firmware and controller to provide the maximum density of 4TB (Terabytes). SK Hynix makes the most of its 72-Layer 512Gb 3D NAND chips to double the biggest density of the SSD of the same size with 256Gb NAND chips.

A single 4TB SSD could contain 200 UHD (Ultra-HD) movies, each of which is generally as large as approximately 20GB (Gigabytes). The new eSSD supports sequential read and write speed of up to 560MB/s (Megabytes per second) and 515MB/s, respectively, and it can perform 98,000 random read IOPS (Input/Output operations per second) and 32,000 random write IOPS. SK hynix also improved the read latency, which is of the utmost importance in eSSD performance. The Company is sampling the product to server and data center clients in the United States.

The Company also finished developing enterprise PCIe (PCI Express) SSD and is shipping samples to server and data center clients. The PCIe SSD will also use the 72-Layer 3D NAND and have a capacity of more than 1TB. The 1TB PCIe SSD operates at 2,700MB/s and 1,100MB/s of sequential read/write speed and runs random read/write performance of 230,000 IOPS and 35,000 IOPS.

“SK hynix started mass-producing Client SSD with its 3D NAND chips and in-house firmware and controller last year. Now we have expanded our SSD business portfolio with the development of eSSD,” said Jin Kang, the Head of NAND Planning and Enabling. “The Company plans to actively meet growing eSSD market demands to contribute to enhancing its profitability in NAND Flash business” he added.

According to IHS Markit, the SSD market revenue is expected to total USD 25.1 billion in 2017 and post a continuous annual growth of 5.6% to total 31.2 billion in 2021. Especially, the revenue of the enterprise SSD will lead the market growth by rising from USD 13.4 billion to 17.6 billon at a CAGR of 7% during the same period.