Samsung Electronics announced on the 21st that it has developed a ‘second-generation Smart Solid State Drive (SSD)’, with enhanced internal computing functions.
Samsung Electronics has jointly developed its second-generation Smart SSD with AMD. Computational performance has more than doubled compared to the first-generation Smart SSD released back in 2020. The first-generation Smart SSD was also a collaboration between Samsung Electronics and AMD.
Samsung Electronics explains that if the second-generation Smart SSD is applied to the system, computational processing time can be reduced by up to 50% compared to ordinary SSD-equipped systems. Energy consumption and CPU utilization are reduced by up to 70% and 97%, respectively.
Samsung Electronics' Smart SSD is a kind of 'computational storage' that can process data in a storage space. Computational storage is attracting attention as a next-generation storage device that enables efficient services in metaverse, artificial intelligence (AI), and big data, which require processing large amounts of data.
Unlike existing SSDs that only store data, Samsung Electronics' Smart SSD has a computing function inside. When processing particular data, it performs computation functions directly within the SSD. By minimizing data movement between the CPU, GPU, and RAM, system performance and energy efficiency are simultaneously improved.
Jin-hyuk Choi, vice president of solution development at Samsung Electronics’ memory division says, "Samsung Electronics has confirmed the growth potential of computational storage through the first-generation Smart SSDs. We will actively respond to market demands such as database and video transcoding with second-generation Smart SSDs that enhance computational performance.”
According to Omdia, a market research firm, Samsung Electronics maintained the highest market share of the SSD market in the first quarter of this year with 40.9%. In the enterprise server market, it had a share of 49.8%.
By introducing the ZNS SSD with ZNS(Zoned Namespace) technology last June etc., Samsung Electronics is pioneering the future SSD market.
Samsung Electronics plans to promote computational storage standardization in cooperation with international storage standardization organizations such as the SNIA(Storage Networking Industry Association) and the NVMe(Non-Volatile Memory Express) Working Group.
By Staff Reporter Yun-sup Song sys@etnews.com