Samsung develops next-generation data storage device

Samsung Electronics Co. on Thursday unveiled an upgraded data storage device that significantly reduces the computer processing time and energy consumption.

The storage device, dubbed a second-generation smart solid-state drive (SSD), is expected to cement Samsung’s No. 1 position in the SSD market, where it claimed 40.9% in the first quarter of this year.

Samsung, the world’s largest memory chipmaker, plans to mass produce the high-performance SSD from as early as 2024.

SSD stores data in NAND flash memory and is replacing hard disk drives as a stable storage device. 

The new SSD model directly processes a portion of data previously handled by the central processing unit (CPU), thereby minimizing data transfer between computer hardware such as the CPU, graphics processing unit and random access memory.

Compared to conventional SSDs, the second-generation storage device slashes computer’s data processing time by 50%, energy consumption by up to 70% and CPU utilization or the time it spends on a given task by as much as 97%.

“This technology can avoid the bottlenecks that often occur when moving data between storage devices and CPUs, resulting in markedly improved system performance and much higher energy efficiency,” Samsung said in a statement.

The smart SSD is playing an increasingly important role with the explosive growth of next-generation technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, deep learning and 5G and 6G mobile networks, which require large amounts of data processing.

Back in 2020, Samsung developed the first-generation smart SSD jointly with a US-based fabless chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD). Both companies have been in a strategic partnership since 2019.

The first-generation storage device has been supplied to global IT companies since last year, including the video conferencing platform ZOOM.

“Memory chips alone cannot process the explosively growing amount of data,” said a Samsung Electronics official. “We will pioneer the next-generation memory market such as smart SSDs’.”

Write to Ji-Eun Jeong at jeong@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article