Samsung has disclosed more details on an upcoming product, the PM9E1, which is set to be its first PCIe 5.0 SSD aimed at the end-user market (what it calls PC/client OEMs). 

Its predecessor, the PM9A1, was launched nearly three years ago and featured the same core components as the 980 Pro, leading me to believe that the PM9E1 might well be the OEM version of the Samsung 1000 Pro, the SSD destined to replace the 990 Pro as Samsung’s flagship SSD (and a candidate for best SSD of 2024).

In a blog post on the company’s website, Yongcheol Bae, Executive Vice President of Memory Product Planning at Samsung Electronics, revealed that the PM9E1 is “set to be developed this June”, will support PCIe 5.0 and features an 8-channel controller, twice as many as the one before. Compared to the PM9A1, there will be a 100% improvement in sequential read speed and a 33% improvement in efficiency.

This is not Samsung’s first foray in the world of PCIe 5.0 SSD; it launched the PM1743 back in December 2021, which means that consumers will have had to wait almost FOUR years in order to a PCIe 5.0 cutting edge SSD from Samsung. 

By which time, enterprise will be looking towards PCIe 6.0, leaving me with the impression that like Intel, Nvidia and AMD, Samsung is looking towards B2B and enterprise - rather than consumers- for growth.

Key to edge AI

That means read speeds of up to 14 GBps and - should the other numbers increase by the same margins - writes of up to 10.4 GBps, random reads of up to 2M IOPS and random writes of up to 1.7M IOPS. No details as to capacity (likely to be up to 4TB), warranty (likely to be five years) or endurance (previous generation hit 1200 TBW for the highest capacity).

Bae ended with a cryptic statement about the role of this particular SSD. “It is expected to be a key product for on-device AI, as it can transfer large language models (LLMs) to DRAM in less than one second”. LLM vary enormously in sizes, from hundreds of GB to tens of TB and there has been a surge in interest from the likes of AMD and Intel to launch a generation of AI PC with integrated NPU.

Expect the new drive to come with an 8th generation TLC V-NAND and available through select devices from major PC OEMs (e.g. HP, Lenovo, Dell) later this year. There should be OEM units available from the likes of Amazon, Newegg, BestBuy and Walmart, just in time for Black Friday.

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