Samsung's press release on the Flash Memory Summit contains little that is concrete and much that is already known. The previously presented new generation of smartphone storage UFS 4.0 is scheduled to go into series production this month. What exactly is behind the new “memory-semantic SSD” remains unclear.
UFS 4.0 and “new” enterprise SSDs< /h2>
Samsung had already presented the new smartphone storage UFS 4.0 with up to 4,200 MB/s and 1 TB in May. Now follows the announcement that the memory will go into series production this month. Samsung is expected to deploy UFS 4.0 in new smartphone flagships such as the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4, among others. Both are expected at the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event on August 10, 2022.
Samsung also announces the availability of the PM1743 and PM1653 enterprise SSDs. Both are also already known, the fast PM1743 with 13 GB/s via PCIe 5.0 was already presented at CES 2022 in January. The announcement of the PM1653 with SAS 24G, which Samsung had already unveiled in April 2021, dates back much further.
“Memory-semantic SSD” without details
On the other hand, the “memory-semantic SSD” appears innovative, which, according to Samsung, should “combine the advantages of storage and DRAM memory”. However, Samsung keeps a low profile with details or even specific key data. The only thing that is clear is that both NAND flash and DRAM are used; As is well known, Samsung manufactures both memory types itself. The (large?) DRAM cache, in conjunction with the Compute Express Link (CXL), is said to provide significant performance increases over conventional SSDs when accessing small data blocks, which are important in the emerging AI and machine learning workloads.
Leveraging Compute Express Link (CXL) interconnect technology and a built-in DRAM cache, Memory-semantic SSDs can achieve up to a 20x improvement in both random read speed and latency when used in AI and ML applications. Optimized to read and write small-sized data chunks at dramatically faster speeds, Samsung's Memory-semantic SSDs will be ideal for the growing number of AI and ML workloads that require very fast processing of smaller data sets.
Samsung
Petabyte storage for servers or the collection of metadata about SSDs and their components with a new telemetry technology were also discussed, with which data centers should be able to “detect and prevent potential problems at an early stage”.< /p>
There have been no major announcements so far, while SK Hynix and YMTC, for example, have presented their new 3D NAND generations. The Flash Memory Summit 2022 topic page provides further innovations from the memory fair.