Samsung Introduces High-Density 6Gbps SATA SSD and 16Gb-64GB DDR4 RDIMM

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it is rolling out its PM883, the highest density datacenter SATA drive, at eight terabytes (TB). Samsung's new solid state drive (SSD) offering is the industry's first datacenter SATA drive to incorporate LPDDR4 DRAM modules and features a 6.0-gigabits-per-second (Gbps) 2.5-inch SATA interface.

The high-performance PM883 is expected to accelerate a transition in many existing enterprise datacenters to SATA-formatted SSD designs, with improved economies of scale through the use of advanced-generation V-NAND technology at higher densities.

"We are thrilled to have the opportunity to enable a high level of storage density with low power consumption, which thanks to the efficiency of our 64-layer V-NAND-based technology, allows us to double the capacity of current SATA storage," said Jim Elliott, corporate senior vice president, memory sales and marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. "Our expanded lineup for the PM883 will offer up to 8TB to allow optimal use in existing enterprise and cloud storage systems."

The PM883 includes 16Gb LPDDR4 DRAM based on advanced 10-nanometer (nm)-class process technology. Also, for the first time in the industry, a SATA 3.3-compliant Power Disable (PWDIS) feature allows power management in individual SSD units to maximize the energy efficiency of tomorrow's datacenters.

With additional power-saving technology, the new drive uses only 2.8 watts of power when reading, and 3.7 watts when writing.

The PM883 reads data sequentially at up to 550 megabits per second (MB/s) and sequentially writes at up to 520MB/s. Random reads deliver up to 98,000 IOPS and random writes up to 28,000 IOPS.

Regarding endurance, the PM883 has a TBW (total bytes written) rating of 5466TB for the 3840GB drive and 10,932TB for the 7680GB drive.

In related enterprise memory news, Samsung announced that this week it will exhibit two new or upcoming memory solutions key to the High-Performance Computing (HPC) market - the first 8-terabyte SSD built in the highly anticipated ultra-small NF1 form factor, and the first 64GB DDR4 RDIMM using 16Gb monolithic chips.

Samsung NF1 SSD Exhibition

The Samsung NF1 (formerly referred to as NGSFF), which has been designed to dramatically improve the storage capacity and performance of next-generation 1U rack servers, will be exhibited for the first time, at the 2018 Open Compute Project U.S. Summit in the San Jose (CA) Convention Center (Samsung Booth - B45). The Summit will be held March 20-21.

The 8TB SSD is now being sampled with several server manufacturers, including two who are co-exhibiting in the Samsung booth. The drive will have the first form factor designed specifically for the dense 1U servers widely used in cloud datacenters.

The upcoming Samsung 64-layer 8TB NF1 SSD can deliver I/O at a phenomenal 0.5 petabytes per second.

Measuring only 30.5mm x 110mm x 4.8mm, the drive will improve space utilization and scaling options for artificial intelligence, deep learning and other hyper-scale datacenter server applications. Up to 36 Samsung NF1 SSDs can fit across the front of a 1RU server allowing nearly six times the storage capacity per RU over U.2 SSDs.

16Gb 64GB DDR4 RDIMM Exhibit

Samsung will also be exhibiting the industry's first 16Gb-based 64GB RDIMMs at the 2018 OCP U.S. Summit, for cloud or enterprise servers.

Available now, these low-power monolithic chips support interface speeds of 2666 MT/s, and offer a greater than 20% power reduction versus 8Gb-based 64GB LRDIMMs. Use of the 16Gb monolithic chips allows the maximum DIMM density to increase to 256GB making them suitable for memory-intensive applications such as In-Memory Databases and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).

Samsung plans to expand its lineup to include higher capacity 16Gb-based 128GB and 256GB RDIMM and LRDIMMs later this year.

Samsung is the industry's pioneer in ultra-small and high density SSDs for server OEMs as well as low-power, high density DRAM, and has been the worldwide sales leader in DDR4 and SSDs for the cloud and HPC markets for the past several years.