At the beginning of the new year, it is time for new products to come out.   Samsung Announces New Upgraded Version of 970Evo for High-end NVMe Solid State Drive: 970Evo Plus: Mainstay unchanged, Flash Upgrade.

Samsung 970Evo Plus continues to use Phoenix master control, with a new 9x-layer stacked 3D TLC flash memory to replace the 64-layer stacked 3D TLC used by the existing 970Evo. The storage capacity starts from 250GB and can provide up to 2TB models.   Although it lags behind Toshiba in product release time, the 970Evo will still be the first 9x-tier 3D flash NVMe solid-state drive to reach the retail market (Toshiba XG6 is an OEM product).

Samsung mysteriously uses 9x to describe the stacking layers of flash memory, which usually means there is no numerical advantage over competitors.   Of course, it is also possible that Samsung decided to take a step-by-step approach to improve the flash memory manufacturing process. For example, it is possible to first introduce the first relatively low 90-layer stack and then gradually transition to 96 layers, which are collectively referred to as 9x layers due to small differences.

Last year Samsung released 9x-layer 3D flash memory information, showing that the new flash memory has no improvement in single die capacity compared with 64-layer stack (256Gb vs. 256/512Gb), but the chip area may be reduced and the overall performance and cost will be better.   The performance of the new flash memory can be seen through the performance test results of external media PCMark 8:

Also noteworthy is Samsung 970Evo Plus's out-of-cache write speed.   Samsung did not choose the full SLC algorithm like Hui Rong and other Taiwanese public masters, but a set of intelligent SLC strategies based on fixed SLC range and dynamic variable range. under the condition of no overheating speed limit, the 500GB Samsung 970Evo Plus can still provide a sequential write speed of up to 850~900MB/s outside the SLC cache.   For 1TB models, the out-of-cache speed is 1.6 ~ 1.7 GB/s.

While many competitors are pursuing it as a target, Samsung is also making progress.   Different from the past, in addition to the suppression from Intel Aoteng, Taiwan's high-end master control scheme has also become more mature. Yesterday, the mainland master control manufacturer Yixin Technology also released a new generation of STAR1000P master control, and the high-end market is no longer Samsung's unique.