Samsung Electronics and Google signed a deal where the South Korean giant agreed to supply advanced three-dimensional NAND flash (3D NAND) solid state drives (SSD).
"The agreement calls for Samsung to supply 3D NAND SSD products for Google data centres. Samsung is in discussions with Google to end some minor differences such as guaranteed shipments and pricing," an executive from a Samsung Electronics partner company told The Korea Times last week.
Despite no official confirmation from Samsung or Google, the value of the deal is believed to be "sizable" according to the same source.
Samsung’s factory in Xian, China, will double its annual shipments of 3D NAND chips to 960,000 wafers this year already, according to research firms.
3D NAND is a type of flash memory that stacks memory die on top of each other within a single package using specialised interconnectors.
The vertical stacking allows for a significantly higher density of memory cells and improves performance and reliability.
In respect to data centres, the solution has higher margins than those used in portable devices such as notebooks and Smartphone as data centres need more storage capacity and faster speeds for data-processing.
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Recently, Samsung signed a deal with Amazon to provide the same technology and is also targeting Facebook.
Apple has been quoted to be conducting quality tests on Samsung’s 3D NAND SSDs as it intends to use the South Korean’s product.
