Samsung Electronics announced today that it has begun mass production of PM9E1, the industry's highest performance and largest capacity PCle5.0 solid state drive. Based on its self-developed 5 nanometer (nm) controller and eighth-generation V-NAND (V8) technology, PM9E1 will provide powerful performance and higher energy efficiency, making it an on-device AIPC solution.

Compared with the previous generation product (PM9A1a), the key attributes of the SSD, including performance, storage capacity, energy efficiency and security, have been improved.

Yong Cheol Bae, executive vice president of memory product planning at Samsung Electronics, said: "Our PM9E1 integrates a 5-nanometer controller to deliver industry-leading energy efficiency and highest performance, which has been verified by our key partners. In the era of rapidly evolving on-device artificial intelligence, Samsung's PM9E1 will lay a solid foundation for global customers to effectively plan their artificial intelligence product portfolio."


Thanks to the eight-channel PCIe5.0 interface, the sequential read and write speeds of the new SSD are more than double that of the previous generation, up to 14.5 gigabytes/second (GB/s) and 13GB/s respectively. This powerful performance enables faster data transfer even in data-intensive AI applications, with 14GB of large language models (LLM) being transferred from SSD to DRAM in less than a second.

PM9E1 is available in a range of storage options, including 512GB, 1TB, 2TB and the industry's largest 4TB. The 4TB option is particularly an optimal solution for PC users who need large storage capacity to handle large files such as AI-generated content, data-heavy programs and high-resolution videos, as well as tasks requiring intensive workloads such as gaming. In addition, power efficiency is significantly improved by more than 50%, thereby extending battery life, making it ideal for on-device AI applications.

To strengthen security measures, Samsung has applied Security Protocol and Data Model (SPDM) v1.2 on PM9E1. The SPDM specification provides "Secure Channel," "Device Authentication" and "Firmware Tamper Authentication" technologies to help prevent supply chain attacks that involve counterfeiting or tampering with data stored in products during production or distribution.

Starting with PM9E1, Samsung plans to expand its advanced SSD products to global PC manufacturers, and is expected to launch PCIe5.0-based consumer products in the future to consolidate its leadership in the on-device artificial intelligence market.