SK Hynix is planning to target industrial SSD (Solid State Drive) markets. Large data centers and server manufacturers are major customers of industrial SSDs. These markets have higher added values compared to normal consumer markets and higher technical barriers. Until now, SK Hynix has not had any results in these markets and it is planning to increase its market shares of NAND flash memories by developing and mass-producing new products.
SK Hynix finished developing SATA SSD that supports up to 4TB and is based on 4th generation 72-layer 512Gb (Gigabits) 3D NAND flash chips and it started to supply samples to major data centers and server manufacturers from the U.S.
It developed its own firmware and controller that are core technologies of this SATA SSD. When a 512Gb NAND flash chip is used instead of a 256Gb NAND flash chip, SSD with twice more of capacity can be made.
SK Hynix’s new SATA SSD implements 560MB/s, which is the highest continuous read out of SATA SSD industries, continuous write of 515MB/s, random read of 98,000 IOPS (Input Output Operations Per Second), and random write of 32,000 IOPS.
“Our new SATA SSD satisfies performance that is requested by major data centers and server manufacturers and its read latency, which is the most important feature of industrial SSDs, also satisfies requests from customers.” said a representative for SK Hynix.

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<Picture of SK Hynix’s 4TB SATA SSD (on the back from the left side), 1TB PCIe SSD, and 4th generation (72-layer) 51Gb 3D NAND flash chips (on the front from the left side). SK Hynix’s NAND controller SoC (System on Chip) is placed on the top of 4th generation 512Gb 3D NAND wafers that are currently being mass-produced.>

SK Hynix finished developing industrial SSDs based on PCIe (PCI Express) standard, which is a next-generation standard for data centers and servers that require high-performance functions such as Big Data, AI (Artificial Intelligence), and Cloud, and started working on getting certifications from its customers. These products are also equipped with 4th generation (72-layer) 3D NAND flash chips and SK Hynix’s firmware. SK Hynix is planning to increase number of lineups and customers sequentially as these chips are planning to support capacity that is higher than 1TB.
1TB PCIe SSD has continuous read of 2,700 MB/s, continuous write of 1,100 MB/s, random read of 23,000 IOPS, and random write of 35,000 IOPS.
“After mass-producing consumer-purpose SSDs that are equipped with our firmware and controllers based on 4th generation 3D NAND flash chips last year, we have made our SSD business official by also developing our own industrial SSDs this time.” said Director Kang Jin-soo of SK Hynix who oversees planning of NAND products. “We expect that our new products will contribute to improving our company’s profitability in NAND flash chips as we actively take actions on industrial SSD markets that have high growth.”
According to a market research company called IHS Market, size of entire SSD markets will grow from $25.1 billion in 2017 to $31.2 billion in 2021 at an average annual rate of 5.6%. Industrial SSD markets are expected to help grow NAND flash chip markets as size of industrial SSD markets is expected to grow from $13.4 billion to $17.6 billion at an average annual rate of 7% during a same period.
Staff Reporter Han, Juyeop | powerusr@etnews.com