Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s largest manufacturer of chips and smartphones, said Monday it has commenced mass production of its 3-bit-per-cell solid state drives for data centers, offering a wider range of choices to consumers.

Samsung said the 3-bit-per-cell SSD, which is equipped with the industry’s most compact 10-nanometer class, 128-gigabit high-performance NAND flash memory, has improved performance compared to the previous 2-bit based models. A SSD is a data storage device used mostly in laptops.

The South Korean tech giant introduced the first 3-bit SSD, the 840 lineup, in 2012. It has been the only player in the industry to roll out such models, allowing it to maintain an upper hand in the laptop market.

The 3-bit SSD lineup is available in three capacities: 240 GB, 480 GB and 960 GB, supporting a wide range of computing environments and IT applications, according to Samsung.

“Samsung has paved the road for the popularization of 3-bit SSDs after expanding the scope to cover data centers from the previous PC sectors,” said Jun Young-hun, a marketing official from Samsung’s chip division. (Yonhap)