Samsung starts mass producing its most advanced data center SSDs

The PM9A3 drive is based on Samsung's sixth-generation (1xx-layer) V-NAND and it offers 3000MB/s sequential write speed, twice the speed offered by the fifth-generation V-NAND-based PM983a (M.2). Additionally, the drive provides a 40% higher random read speed of 750K IOPS and 150% higher random writes at 160K IOPS over the previous generation.


Devdiscourse News Desk | Seoul | Updated: 24-02-2021 14:42 IST | Created: 24-02-2021 14:01 IST
Samsung starts mass producing its most advanced data center SSDs
Image Credit: Samsung
  • Country:
  • Korea Rep

Samsung on Wednesday said that it has started mass producing its most advanced line of data center SSDs - the PM9A3 E1.S - that are customized to meet the challenging demands of hyperscale environments.

The Open Compute Project-compliant SSD is claimed to offer superior performance, power efficiency and reliability as well as additional security to handle enterprise workloads.

"Providing an optimal mix of performance, power, reliability and firmware, we believe our new PM9A3 will help advance today's data center storage technologies and expand the market for OCP-compliant SSDs," said Cheolmin Park, vice president of Memory Product Planning at Samsung Electronics.

The PM9A3 drive is based on Samsung's sixth-generation (1xx-layer) V-NAND and it offers 3000MB/s sequential write speed, twice the speed offered by the fifth-generation V-NAND-based PM983a (M.2). Additionally, the drive provides a 40% higher random read speed of 750K IOPS and 150% higher random writes at 160K IOPS over the previous generation.

PM9A3 is nearly 50% more energy-efficient - 283MB/s per watt for sequential writes - than the previous generation that provides 188MB/s per watt. Samsung claims that replacing all server hard disk drives (HDDs) launched in 2020 with the PM9A3 4TB drive would save 1,484GWh of energy.

In terms of security, PM9A3 boasts a secure boot mechanism for protection against unauthorized firmware being used as well as an anti-rollback mechanism that prevents the drive from rolling back or downgrading to an older flawed version of the firmware.

Give Feedback