Samsung Electronics of Korea has revealed a new product in advanced memory technology. According to the announcement, it has successfully developed the second generation of the SmartSSD product line. The next generation of computational storage assimilates the functionality in a compact form factor of a performance SSD, the new SmartSSD is able to process the data directly, hence minimising the data transfer between RAM, CPU and GPU. This further helps to bypass the awful performance bottleneck that usually occurs when transferring data between storage devices and CPUs, therefore showing a significant improvement in system performance and a higher energy efficiency.
“Commercialisation of the first-generation SmartSSD, in collaboration with AMD, established that the computational storage market has great potential,” said Jin-Hyeok Choi, Executive Vice President and Head of Memory Solution Product & Development at Samsung Electronics. “With the upgraded processing functionality of the second-generation SmartSSD, Samsung will be able to easily address increasing customer needs in the database and video transcoding sectors, as we expand the boundaries of the next-generation storage market.”
“Powered by Xilinx Versal Adaptive SoCs from AMD, second-generation Samsung SmartSSDs enable improved CPU efficiency and greatly reduced energy consumption by efficiently integrating the computing and storage functions in data centres,” said Sina Soltani, Corporate Vice President of Sales, AECG, Data Center and Communication Group at AMD. “As data-intensive applications continue to grow, second-generation Samsung SmartSSDs will deliver the superior performance and efficiency required for this expanding market.”
The SmartSSD comes at a crucial time, especially with the recent developments in AI/ML, and 5G/6G which require improved rates of data transfer and processing. By utilising software and IP developed by customers, along with in-built Arm cores, Samsung’s second-generation SmartSSD enables efficient data processing. Compared to conventional data centre solid-state drives, the processing time for scan-heavy database queries can be slashed by over 50%, energy consumption by up to 70% and CPU utilization by up to 97%.
