Through a press release today, Samsung Electronics announced the successful development of the second generation of its SmartSSD computational storage drives.
In comparison to conventional SSD drives, the new SmartSSD claims to reduce processing time and improve system performance by over 50%, enhance CPU utilization by up to 97% and improve energy efficiency up to 70%. All this is made possible by a new proprietary computation storage mechanism within the hardware that improves processing functionalities by minimizing transfer of data between CPU, GPU, and RAM.
Built-in ARM cores, highly efficient software and intellectual property (IP) developed in consultation with customers, give the storage device increased power to meet the data processing challenges of the next-gen 5G and 6G technologies.
Jin-Hyeok Choi, Executive Vice President and Head of Memory Solution Product & Development at Samsung, expressed his views on the announcement:
"Commercialization of the first-generation SmartSSD, in collaboration with AMD, established that the computational storage market has great potential, 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.”
It is pertinent to mention here that Samsung and AMD co-developed the first-generation SmartSSD in 2020 and supplied it to global IT companies, including video communications platform providers. The product enjoyed widespread acclaim and was awarded an Innovation Awards Honoree at CES 2021 in recognition of its outstanding performance.
Aiming to achieve standardization of SmartSSD technology and for technical validation of its products, Samsung has also collaborated with the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and with NVM Express. Further details regarding this technology can be found in this product brief.