Samsung's bonkers PM9E1 SSD, boasting industry-leading performance, has entered mass production, the company confirmed to us today. The PM9E1 was first announced at the beginning of August but it is now being securely shipped out of Samsung's semiconductor factories. More on that later.
Performance-wise, Samsung says the PM9E1 is the industry's most powerful PC SSD. It is now entering mass production with a 5nm-based controller and eight-generation (V8) V-NAND.
This PICe 5.0 SSD boasts industry-leading performance with incredible power efficiency, making it an optimal choice for on-device AI applications for PCs and laptops that need AI processing power and power efficiency alike.
“In the rapidly growing on-device AI era, Samsung's PM9E1 will offer a robust foundation for global customers to effectively plan their AI portfolios,” said the Executive VP of Memory Product Planing at Samsung Electronics.
High performance and better security during distribution
The PM9E1 SSD boasts a 50% performance increase compared to previous generations. Thanks to the eight-channel PCIe 5.0 interface, this SSD can reach sequential read and write speeds of up to 14.5 GB/s and 13 GB/s, respectively.
According to Samsung, this SSD can transfer a 14GB LLM (Large Language Model) from the SSD to DRAM in less than a second. The other thing that makes it an ideal SSD for AI applications is its +50% improvement in power efficiency.
More details after the video
Interestingly, aside from these impressive performance characteristics, the PM9E1 is also more secure, but not necessarily in the way most people might imagine.
Samsung says it has taken extra security measures to “prevent supply chain attacks involving forgery or manipulation of stored data in the product during production or distribution processes.”
The PM9E1 SSD achieves this higher security through the Security Protocol and Data Model v1.2, which provides Secure Channel, Device Authentication, and Firmware Tampering Attestation technologies.
Samsung didn't say when the PM9E1 PICe 5.0 SSD will be released, but given that it has entered mass production, a commercial launch shouldn't be far off. Pricing details remain unknown for the time being, but we'll keep you posted as soon as we find out more.
Image Credit: Samsung
