Samsung Electronics Develops Second-Generation SmartSSD Computational Storage Drive With Upgraded Processing Functionality

Cuts pro­ces­sing time by over 50%, ener­gy con­sump­ti­on by up to 70% and CPU uti­liza­ti­on by up to 97% com­pared to con­ven­tio­nal SSD drives

Sam­sung Elec­tro­nics, the world lea­der in advan­ced memo­ry tech­no­lo­gy, today announ­ced that it has suc­cessful­ly deve­lo­ped a second gene­ra­ti­on of its pio­nee­ring SmartSSD.

The new pro­prie­ta­ry com­pu­ta­tio­nal sto­rage incor­po­ra­tes data pro­ces­sing func­tion­a­li­ty within a high-per­for­mance SSD. Unli­ke exis­ting SSDs, Samsung’s SmartS­SD can pro­cess data direct­ly, ther­eby mini­mi­zing data trans­fers bet­ween the CPU, GPU and RAM. This tech­no­lo­gy can avo­id the bot­t­len­ecks that often occur when moving data bet­ween sto­rage devices and CPUs, resul­ting in mark­ed­ly impro­ved sys­tem per­for­mance and much hig­her ener­gy efficiency.

The SmartS­SD is play­ing an incre­asing­ly important role, espe­ci­al­ly with the growth of next-gene­ra­ti­on tech­no­lo­gies such as AI, machi­ne lear­ning and 5G/6G, which requi­re lar­ge amounts of data processing.

Lever­aging soft­ware and intellec­tu­al pro­per­ty (IP) deve­lo­ped by cus­to­mers, along with in-built Arm cores, Samsung’s second-gene­ra­ti­on SmartS­SD enables much more effi­ci­ent data pro­ces­sing. Com­pared to con­ven­tio­nal data cen­ter solid-sta­te dri­ves, 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%.

 

Sin­ce its deve­lo­p­ment in 2020 through the joint efforts of Sam­sung and AMD, the first-gene­ra­ti­on SmartS­SD is being sup­pli­ed to glo­bal IT com­pa­nies inclu­ding video com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons plat­form pro­vi­ders. The first-gene­ra­ti­on SmartS­SD was reco­gni­zed as an Inno­va­ti­on Awards Hono­ree at CES 2021 for its out­stan­ding per­for­mance and ener­gy efficiency.

 

Com­mer­cia­liza­ti­on 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 cen­ters,” 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.”

 

Sam­sung Elec­tro­nics is lea­ding efforts to stan­dar­di­ze SmartS­SD tech­no­lo­gy through clo­se col­la­bo­ra­ti­on with the Sto­rage Net­wor­king Indus­try Asso­cia­ti­on (SNIA) and with NVM Express, while see­king to expand the boun­da­ries of SmartS­SD devices through tech­no­lo­gi­cal vali­da­ti­on for a wide varie­ty of applications.