Samsung Starts Mass Production of PM9E1, Industry's Most Powerful PC SSD for AI

[btarunr]

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced it has begun mass-producing PM9E1, a PCIe 5.0 SSD with the industry's highest performance and largest capacity. Built on its in-house 5-nanometer (nm)-based controller and eighth-generation V-NAND (V8) technology, the PM9E1 will provide powerful performance and enhanced power efficiency, making it an optimal solution for on-device AI PCs. Key attributes in SSDs, including performance, storage capacity, power efficiency and security, have all been improved compared to its predecessor (PM9A1a).

"Our PM9E1 integrated with a 5 nm controller delivers industry-leading power efficiency and utmost performance validated by our key partners," said YongCheol Bae, Executive Vice President of Memory Product Planning at Samsung Electronics. "In the rapidly growing on-device AI era, Samsung's PM9E1 will offer a robust foundation for global customers to effectively plan their AI portfolios."



Thanks to the eight-channel PCIe 5.0 interface, the sequential read and write speeds of the new SSD have more than doubled compared to the previous generation, reaching up to 14.5 gigabytes-per-second (GB/s) and 13 GB/s, respectively. This powerful performance enables faster data transfer even with data-intensive AI applications, allowing a 14 GB large language model (LLM) to be transferred from the SSD to DRAM in less than a second.

The PM9E1 offers a range of storage options, including 512 GB, 1 terabyte (TB), 2 TB and the industry's largest capacity of 4 TB. The 4 TB option is especially an optimum solution for PC users in need of high-capacity storage for large-sized files such as AI-generated contents, data-heavy programs and high-resolution videos, as well as tasks that require intensive workloads such as gaming.

Additionally, the significantly improved power efficiency of over 50% allows for longer battery life which is ideal for on-device AI applications.

For stronger security measures, Samsung has applied Security Protocol and Data Model (SPDM) v1.2 to the PM9E1. The SPDM specification provides 'Secure Channel,' 'Device Authentication' and 'Firmware Tampering Attestation' technologies that can help prevent supply chain attacks involving forgery or manipulation of stored data in the product during production or distribution processes.

Starting with PM9E1, Samsung plans to expand its advanced SSD offerings to global PC makers and expects to launch PCIe 5.0-based consumer products in the future to solidify its leadership in the on-device AI market.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[ncrs]

Thanks to the eight-channel PCIe 5.0 interface [...]

Are they calling PCIe x4 "eight-channel" because it does full-duplex just like every PCIe device?

 

[azrael]

...and here we go with the AI malarkey again.

Hey Samsung, how about giving us a reasonably-priced *NON-QLC* >4 TB SSD instead.

 

[Wirko]

Interestingly, one of the predecessors, the PM9B1, had a controller from Marvell.

Are they calling PCIe x4 "eight-channel" because it does full-duplex just like every PCIe device?

No, it's because it has eight channels to memory chips. Each channel is an 8-bit DDR bus, and it runs at 2400 MT/s in all existing 8-channel Gen 5 M.2 drives.

 

[ncrs]

Interestingly, one of the predecessors, the PM9B1, had a controller from Marvell.


No, it's because it has eight channels to memory chips. Each channel is an 8-bit DDR bus, and it runs at 2400 MT/s in all existing 8-channel Gen 5 M.2 drives.

NAND channels aren't PCIe, and the press release specifically calls the PCIe portion "eight-channel".
It's probably a mistranslation from Korean, but Samsung is a big company and should check what they release since it reads like malicious marketing speak.
Something like "Thanks to the eight-channel NAND architecture and PCIe 5.0 interface, the sequential [...]" would have been better.

 

[Wirko]

NAND channels aren't PCIe, and the press release specifically calls the PCIe portion "eight-channel".
It's probably a mistranslation from Korean, but Samsung is a big company and should check what they release since it reads like malicious marketing speak.
Something like "Thanks to the eight-channel NAND architecture and PCIe 5.0 interface, the sequential [...]" would have been better.

I didn't pay enough attention before. But hey, maybe this SSD can reach 14.5 GB/s reading and 13 GB/s writing at the same time. If that were true (but it isn't), no one could object to that "8-channel" marketing speak.

 

[_JP_]

I guess Samsung's expectation is that AI is going to look at this SSD and go like: "Wow!"

 

[StimpsonJCat]

Why mention A.I.? What does that have to do with anything. The model is held in memory.

 

[Bruno Vieira]

Why mention A.I.? What does that have to do with anything. The model is held in memory.

There is a new trend of using SSD as a tier of slower memory (yes, swap, but in a smarter way), and it's producing good results.

 

[Bwaze]

Hey Samsung, how about giving us a reasonably-priced *NON-QLC* >4 TB SSD instead.

At this point I'd take QLC, this unprecedented stagnation in storage capacity is making 4 year old SATA Samsung 8TB QVO looking more and more desirable. And it's crap, with sustained speeds half that of a HDD!

But it doesn't look like we're going to get anything else. Even all the announced large capacity NAND tech will most probably end up in AI server products, who cares about the penniless rabble...

 

[Snoop05]

Interestingly, one of the predecessors, the PM9B1, had a controller from Marvell.


No, it's because it has eight channels to memory chips. Each channel is an 8-bit DDR bus, and it runs at 2400 MT/s in all existing 8-channel Gen 5 M.2 drives.

I have one PM9B1 and havent noticed this till i saw what you wrote, nice one.
Also seems like it heavily relies on ASPM otherwise its about to catch on fire idle without extra cooling.