Samsung Begins Mass Production of its Most Advanced Data Centre SSDs Customized for Hyperscale Environments

Samsung has begun mass producing its most advanced line of data center SSDs, the PM9A3 E1.S. The new PM9A3 fully complies with the Open Compute Project (OCP) NVMe Cloud SSD Specification to satisfy the rigorous demands of enterprise workloads. Defined by leading data center providers including Facebook, the OCP Specification is a set of unified interoperable standards, enabling SSD vendors to work toward next-generation storage designs with much more effectiveness.

Built with Samsung’s sixth-generation (1xx-layer) V-NAND, the PM9A3 dramatically improves performance over the fifth-generation V-NAND-based PM983a (M.2), with double the sequential write speed at 3000MB/s, a 40% higher random read speed of 750K IOPS and 150% higher random writes at 160K IOPS.

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Power features are critical to maximizing the efficiency of data centre operations. The Samsung PM9A3 provides superior power efficiency at 283MB/s per watt for sequential writes, making it nearly 50% more energy efficient than the previous generation’s 188MB/s per watt. In fact, replacing all server hard disk drives (HDDs) launched in 2020 with the PM9A3 4TB drive would save 1,484 gigawatt hours (GWh) of energy, which is enough electricity to power all households in a major metropolitan city during a summer month.

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The Samsung PM9A3 also comes in nine power levels to suit a diverse range of SSD form factors and interfaces — from 8.25 watts for the M.2 form factor to 35W for newer form factors such as EDSFF. In addition to standard security features such as user data encryption and authentication, the new drive is equipped with secure boot and anti-rollback mechanisms to ensure robust data protection.