Samsung has announced that it has begun mass production of industry’s first 4-bit (QLC, quad-level cell) 4-terabyte (TB) SATA solid-state drive (SSD) for consumers. This is based on 1-terabit (Tb) V-NAND offering the performance of 3-bit design

With the new 1Tb 4-bit V-NAND chip, Samsung will be able to efficiently produce a 128GB memory card for smartphones that will lead the charge toward higher capacities for high-performance memory storage.

“Samsung’s 4-bit 4TB QLC SATA SSD maintains its performance levels at the same level as a 3-bit SSD, by using a 3-bit SSD controller and TurboWrite technology, while increasing drive capacity through the use of 32 chips, all based on 64-layer fourth-generation 1Tb V-NAND,” said Samsung.

This offers sequential read speed of 540 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 520 MB/s. Samsung said that it is planning to introduce several 4-bit consumer SSDs later this year with 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities in 2.5-inch form factor. In addition, the company expects to provide M.2 NVMe SSDs for the enterprise this year and begin mass production of 4-bit fifth-generation V-NAND.