Samsung Launches 61TB SSD, 122TB Model in Development
One of the world’s largest capacity SSDs has been released, without major news coverage.
Samsung has recently introduced its new BM1743 solid-state drive, designed for datacenter and read-intensive storage applications. It is the first 60TB-class SSD Samsung has manufactured; in addition, Samsung envisions a 120TB-class SSD using the same type of 3D V-NAND memory.
The BM1743 is based on a proprietary Samsung controller that supports PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0 interfaces including support for the company’s 7th generation V-NAND, Samsung’s version of 3D NAND, QLC (Quad-Level Cell) memory.
In terms of performance, the BKM1743 offers sequential read/write speeds of 7200MB/s / 2000MB/s respectively. Samsung also specifies speeds of 1.6 million 4K random reads and up to 110 000 4K random writes. Those speeds are nothing to brag about and are barely in line with the industries best SSDs, but it is sufficient for its target applications.
Endurance is toted at 0.26 full drive writes per day for the 61.44TB model. This is designed for read intensive storage applications such as AI inference, so write endurance isn’t of major concern; the drives will barely be rewritten, if ever in the target applications.
Samsung is yet to disclose any information on the power consumption of the new SSD, which could be quite high considering its capacity. When considering the main selling point of the drive, its storage density, power consumption could again be of little concern to potential buyers.
Samsung has very few competitors in the flash memory market. Currently, only Solidigm with the D5-P5336 and Western Digital with their SN655 can offer 61.44TB capacity with a PCIe interface. Other companies are yet to release SSDs of that capacity. So, for now, Samsung, Solidigm and Western Digital can take advantage of their unique market position.
