Samsung today launched the 850 PRO, a new solid state drive (SSD) line-up featuring Samsung’s three-dimensional (3D) vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory technology. The SSD will be available globally across 53 markets from this month.

Designed for use in high-end PCs and workstations, the SSD's V-NAND features a proprietary vertical cell structure overcoming the density limit currently facing planar NAND architecture used in conventional flash memory and yielding speed, endurance and energy efficiency.

So what's the deal with 3D Nand or V-NAND? In short, it actually solves the scalability problem of traditional NAND. Every die shrink has been more difficult than the previous as the endurance and performance have decreased with every node, making it less and less efficient to scale the size down.

Traditionally NAND and other semiconductors are scaled horizontally along the X and Y axes but due to the laws of physics, there is a limit of how small the transistors can be made. 3D NAND introduces a vertical dimension: Instead of cramming transistors horizontally closer and closer to each other, 3D NAND stacks layers of transistors on top of each other.

By stacking transistors (cells) vertically, Samsung considered that the 40nm process was enough to do the job. When there are 32 cells on top of each other, it is obvious that there is no need for a 10nm-class node because the stacking increases the density, allowing production costs to scale lower.

The SSD 850 PRO comes in a 2.5-inch form factor and uses the SATA 6Gbps interface. It features a 32-layer 3D V-NAND flash memory, an up to 1 GB LPDDR2 DRAM cache memory and a 3-core MEX controller -- the same used in the SSD 840 EVO.

The Samsung 850 PRO has a SATA III (6Gb/s) interface, its sequential read performance reaches up to 550 megabytes per second (MB/s) and its write performance of up to 520MB/s. Random read performance is up to 100,000 input/output operations-per-second (IOPS), with write speeds of up to 90,000 IOPS.

The drive also offers a Dynamic Thermal Guard feature, which maintains ambient temperature while operating and prevents potential data loss from overheating.

The Samsung 850 PRO will be available in 128 gigabyte (GB), 256GB, 512GB and 1 terabyte (TB) storage capacities. Prices will begin at US$129.99 for the 128GB drive, US$199.99 for the 256GB drive, US$399.99 for the 512GB drive, and finally US$699.99 for the 1TB drive. Warranty will be a whopping 10 years.

According to the first reviews for the new SSD drives that have appeared onlione, the new 850 PRO offers superior performance, endurance and low power consumption compared to 2D NAND-based drives.