Samsung has yet to introduce full-fat PCIe 5.0 solid-state drives at retail — we don't really count the PCIe 5.0 x2 / PCIe 4.0 x4 990 Evo and 990 Evo Plus — but it's preparing flash memory that will be able to power not only the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSDs, but could also support next-generation PCIe 6.0 drives. The new 4xx-layer 3D NAND devices will have an interface speed of 5.6 GT/s and will be presented at the upcoming International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) .

Samsung's ultra-fast 10th Generation V-NAND memory maintains the TLC (Tri-Level Cell, or three bits per cell) architecture and has a capacity of 1Tb (128 GB) per die. Samsung claims that its new 4xx-layer 3D TLC NAND has a storage density of 28 Gb/mm². That's just slightly lower than Samsung's 1Tb 3D QLC V-NAND, which has a storage density of 28.5 Gb/mm², currently the world's densest non-volatile memory.

Current NAND chips typically have either eight or 16 NAND dies per package. That means 16-die packages would offer up 2TB of storage, and four such packages on a single-sided SSD would enable 8TB of storage — or up to 16TB on a dual-sided M.2 2280 drive. (Note that Samsung hasn't created a new dual-sided SSD in quite some time, opting to stick with single-sided designs.)

Arguably, the most important feature of Samsung's 10th Generation V-NAND is its interface speed: 5.6 GT/s, which is significantly faster than the 3.6 GT/s featured by YMTC's memory with Xtacking architecture. At 5.6 GT/s, this equates to around 700 MB/s, which means that 10 of these devices could saturate a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, and 20 will be enough to saturate an ultra-fast PCIe 5.0 x4 interface. That's what powers the fastest options among the world's best SSDs . With the potential for up to 32 dies in two NAND packages, that's already half way to reaching maximum throughput on a PCIe 6.0 x4 interface.

Samsung plans to unveil its 10th Generation V-NAND memory at ISSCC 2025, and it's reasonable to expect the company will start volume production of this non-volatile memory next year as well. Unfortunately, it's not clear when the new memory will find their way into Samsung's own SSDs. Typically, new NAND solutions can be used in a variety of retail products, including USB drives, memory cards, SSDs, smartphones, and more. Even if production on the 10th Generation V-NAND begins in 2025, it's unclear whether we'll see that memory implemented in Samsung SSDs next year.