back to article By gum, that's chewy: Samsung's NF1 fattens M.2 card capacity with wider gumstick format

Samsung's 8TB next-generation small form factor (NGSFF) NF1 flash card is to be standardised by the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association in October. It measures 11cm x 3.05cm, compared to M.2's 11cm x 2.2cm. In that space Samsung has fitted two rows of four 256Gbit TLC 3D V-NAND chip packages on each side - 16 chip …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    8TB?

    16 chip packages of 256Gbit each = 512GB per card. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious but wouldn't you need 16 x 16 256Gbit packages to get to 8TB?

    Is it maybe 16 chip packages each with 16 x 256Gbit chips per package?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 8TB?

      Its 2 rows of 8 each side so 32x256 = 8192

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 8TB?

        I think the point was the missing conversion from bit to byte in the calculations...

    2. Ben 44

      Re: 8TB?

      The article is somewhat confusing on this point.

      The drive is made out of 16 chip packages, each provides *512GB* so 16*512GB = 8TB. Each chip package consists of 16 layers of 256Gbits, so 16*256/8=512GB per package.

  2. Andy Tunnah

    Dear lord

    I know I don't need it, I know I have no need for it, and would never even hit the performance limit. But by God I want one.

    1. ArrZarr Silver badge

      Re: Dear lord

      Currently struggling along with a 256GB NvME SSD as a boot and main games disc. The idea of having 8TB of space on an NvME speed boot disc to play with blows my mind.

      On the other hand, this will probably cost about half of the deposit I paid for my house, which is just a tad silly.

      1. ManOnTheHill

        Re: Dear lord

        Yeah, it'll probably cost that much, but this isn't aimed at individual users - at least not until flash prices drop pretty dramatically. But the corporate/enterprise world will eat these up, even at current prices; there is a hunger for flash in that environment that is truly astonishing.

    2. Rusty 1

      Re: Dear lord

      You can't possibly have just one - it would only get lonely.

      1. Mage Silver badge
        Alien

        Re: can't possibly have just one

        How many do I need so as I can carry a copy of the Internet in my starship?

    3. Mage Silver badge

      Re: Dear lord

      How would you do backups?

      It would take me about 1/2 year to upload that, or about 2 weeks to download, I rather suspect though that my "unlimited" is about 1T byte a month.

      I may have made a mistake in the sums.

    4. J. Cook Silver badge

      Re: Dear lord

      One? I want at least six.

  3. }{amis}{
    Angel

    Epic Work Now If Only

    That SSD's didn't cost more than their weight in gold!

    Evo960 512gb = £209.99 / 9.07g = £23.15 per g

    The wholesale price of 18-carat gold in UK = £21.53 per g

    1. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: Epic Work Now If Only

      You could have said the same for SD cards for decades now.

      https://www.wired.com/2010/01/panasonic-sd-card-worth-8-times-its-weight-in-gold/

  4. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    What you gonna do with 1.132PB of storage? Fill it up with torrents and pr0nz?

    Mind = boggling

    1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge

      You say that like it's a bad thing.

      GJC

    2. pɹɐʍoɔ snoɯʎuouɐ
      Pirate

      "What you gonna do with 1.132PB of storage? Fill it up with torrents and pr0nz?"

      I take it that mind reading course on udemy is quite good then?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That's a heck of a lot of torrent files.

      1. pɹɐʍoɔ snoɯʎuouɐ

        "That's a heck of a lot of torrent files."

        not so much torrents, but if you have a lot of DVD's and bluerays you have collected over the years ( including replacing previous VHS purchases) and would prefer to watch them in the full glory your UHD HDR tv can provide via an Emby server.... and add CDs ripped as FLAC that you have collected over 30+ years, also replacing vinyl records and compact cassettes you already paid once to format shift, and have no intention of doing so again.....

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          ... ad toss in the datasets which see semi-[regular use and you get to 20 TB here. That's completely ignoring the 10K and MLC flash.

          I'll be dead before this comes within reach.

  5. Andy The Hat Silver badge

    Warranty ... who needs it?

    1.3 drive writes *per day*? Gawd blimey Guv, that's a serious "fit and forget" reliability claim!

  6. monsted

    Another standard?

    Please just adopt the Ruler format. We don't need to fragment the datacenter storage market any further than it already is.

    1. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: Another standard?

      It looks like you could bodge-fit one into a current M2 slot, depending on the components around it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        It's no standard

        No standards group is willing to bless this cluster fork.

        Yes, you can stuff this into an M.2 connector in many cases, but the signals are not the same. If done wrong, you could smoke your laptop or motherboard by using this new device. Signals are on different pins. Extra voltages, etc. Computer vendors are starting to release warnings about this device and the potential damage it can do to your system.

        1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

          AIUI

          It's really just M.2 with some of the reserved pins used for "enterprise" features and is designed for "backward compatibility". But, yes, we all no about compatibility that is backward.

    2. Adam 52 Silver badge

      Re: Another standard?

      Is it only me that finds Ruler disturbingly similar to a Pentium 2 for Slot 1?

  7. RainCaster
    Thumb Down

    Beware of NF1

    Samsung has designed a product that will plug into the M.2 slots on your laptop or motherboard, but they will not work. Wrong signals, extra voltages, etc. It could even smoke your laptop in some cases.

  8. Adam 52 Silver badge

    "measures 11cm x 3.05cm, compared to M.2's 11cm x 2.2cm"

    I don't understand. According to Wikipedia (so subject to the usual caveats, but the spec they use as a reference requires a login) you can have m.2 at 3cm by 11cm.

    So what does this bring, other than an extra half millimetre?

    1. ChrisC Silver badge

      "So what does this bring, other than an extra half millimetre?"

      When you're trying to squeeze as much as possible onto a PCB, even a fraction of a mm of extra space in the right place can make the difference between your design being achievable within all your current design rules, or only being achievable if you decide to recertify your manufacturing processes to handle the new rules you'd need to bring in, or potentially not being achieveable at all because your current design rules already push your processes to their physical limits.

      Or it might alternatively just be Samsung wanting to make a bit of a splash by driving a new form factor through the standards committee, rather than just quietly adopting an existing standard and getting on with the job without any fuss...

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