Samsung shows off its 256TB SSD for the server market

Recently, at the Flash Memory Summit 2023 held in Santa Clara, United States, Samsung unveiled some technological advancements in its storage chip sector, employing cutting-edge technology to address the “exponential growth of data and its myriad applications.”

According to TomsHardware, Samsung initially displayed the PM1743 series server PCIe 5.0 SSD, released last year, with a current maximum capacity of 15.36TB. The first batch of users has already utilized it within the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as in applications like ChatGPT. Moreover, the standard 2.5-inch PM9D3a series server PCIe 5.0 SSD has also been fully developed, featuring an 8-channel controller. Its speed has reached 2.3 times that of its predecessor, and the initial batch has a capacity of 15.36TB, with a forthcoming increase to 30.72TB next year.

To meet the power and volume constraints of a single server rack while maximizing data storage capacity, Samsung has also prepared a 256TB SSD, equipped with the latest QLC NAND flash memory and utilizing the most integrated components. Samsung claims that, in actual testing, the power consumption of a 256TB SSD is merely one-seventh that of eight 32TB SSDs.

Furthermore, Samsung shared details of a new petabyte-level ultra-high capacity flash memory solution called “PBSSD,” jointly developed with Supermicro. This architecture provides high scalability by varying the capacity according to the needs of the application. Samsung has employed a technology named “Flexible Data Placement” (FDP), optimizing the method of data allocation. This technique enhances performance predictability in real-world large-scale workloads, with the underlying software being entirely open source.