Samsung may be the first company to reach a staggering milestone with the launch of a 1PB SSD, which would set new standards for memory in the industry.
Not only has the company confirmed its plans to build a petabyte solid state drive (PBSSD), but… Korea Economic Journal also reported that the company will increase memory density to “extreme levels” in the manufacturing process.
“The 11-nanometer DRAM currently being developed will achieve the highest level of memory density in the industry,” said Lee Jung-bae. President of Samsung’s Device Solutions division. “In the coming era of sub-10nm DRAM and 1000-layer V-NAND, innovation in new structures and materials is crucial.”
PBSSDs are a matter of when, not if
Such a move would dramatically increase storage capacity and speed, meaning that PBSSDs could be suitable for today’s most intensive workloads, where generative AI normally takes center stage.
The company has been trying to achieve this milestone for a long time: an SSD of at least a million gigabytes in size, which would be ten times larger than the largest SSDs beyond, including the ExaDrive 100TB SSD.
For example, last year Samsung released a roadmap for SSD production starting with the ambition to create 1,000-layer NAND memory. And that was also said earlier this year wanted to launch a 1PB SSD within ten years. But there are suggestions that this timescale is being shortened dramatically.
Samsung will continue to push its advanced manufacturing processes to achieve ever-higher storage densities. For example, in V-NAND, more cells are stacked on printed circuit boards with a lower height, while interference between the cells is minimized.
The publication reported that a new memory type is on the way that can achieve at least 1 PB, which would allow much lower power consumption than conventional drives.
Samsung itself hinted that the world’s first petabyte-scale PBSSD is on its way at its Memory Tech Day event, which would help servers reduce power consumption and maximize rack capacity and space. The company may reach this milestone in its roadmap much sooner than expected, given the momentum the company’s currency is experiencing.