Samsung has announced that it is mass-producing the first NVMe SSD that fits into a single ball grid array package, fitting all of the SSD components — NAND flash memory, DRAM and controller — in an area not larger than that of a coin. Called PM971-NVMe, the SSDs will be available in storage capacities up to 512GB, and will be up for sale starting in June.
With dimensions of 20 x 16 x 1.5mm and an overall weight that's just one gram, the PM971-NVMe's volume is a hundredth of a standard 2.5-inch SSD, with a surface area that's a fifth of the newer M.2 SSDs. Samsung was able to sandwich 16 of its 48-layer 256-gigabit V-NAND flash chips (resulting in a total of 240GB storage), a 20nm 4Gb LPDDR4 DRAM chip, and a controller into the PM971-NVMe.
Jung-bae Lee, senior vice president at Samsung's storage division, had this to say:
Samsung's new BGA NVMe SSD triples the performance of a typical SATA SSD, in the smallest form factor available, with storage capacity reaching up to 512GB. The introduction of this small-scale SSD will help global PC companies to make timely launches of slimmer, more stylish computing devices, while offering consumers a more satisfactory computing environment.
