Take the Samsung 850 Pro and 850 EVO, add some Tantalum Capacitors for enhanced power loss protection, tune their firmware for enterprise workloads and QoS, and what do you get?
...you get the Samsung PM863 and SM863 lines of enterprise SSDs! These 2.5" SATA units were just announced, and as we suspected after reviewing the new 2TB 850 EVO and Pro, these new models can include even more flash packages, dramatically increasing the flash capacity. Here is a breakdown of the launch pricing and capacities:
SM863 (2-bit MLC VNAND):
- 120GB - $140 ($1.17/GB)
- 240GB - $180 ($0.75/GB)
- 480GB - $330 ($0.69/GB)
- 960GB -
$870 ($0.91/GB) < possible typo$640 ($0.67/GB) - 1.92TB - $1260 ($0.66/GB)
PM863 (3-bit MLC VNAND):
- 120GB - $125 ($1.04/GB)
- 240GB - $160 ($0.67/GB)
- 480GB - $290 ($0.60/GB)
- 960GB - $550 ($0.57/GB)
- 1.92TB - $1100 ($0.57/GB)
- 3.84TB - $2200 ($0.57/GB)
Aside from the possible typo in the pricing I informed Samsung of the pricing oddity and they have replied with a correction. Their site should be updated to reflect this correction shortly.
These are some very competitive prices for enterprise SSDs, and the fact that the TLC version can cram just under 4TB into a 7mm 2.5" form factor is just astounding. The MLC version capacities appear to still follow that of the 850 Pro, minus a bit of available capacity due to higher levels of over-provisioning.
More impressive is the endurance ratings of these SSDs. The SM863 line is rated (varying by capacity) from 770 Terabytes Written (TBW) to an astonishing 12,320 TBW for the 1.92TB model! That's over 12 Petabytes! The PM863 is rated lower as it is TLC based, but is still no slouch as it ranges from 170 to 5,600 TBW for the 3.84TB capacity. The SM863 carries a 5-year warranty, while the PM863 drops that to 3-years.
We've been waiting to see Samsung's 32-layer VNAND appear in enterprise units for some time now, and look forward to testing them just as soon as we can get our hands on them!
Full press blast after the break.
