Samsung would like to accommodate as much memory as possible in a server and is showing a 256 TB SSD for this purpose. It’s much more efficient than a combination of smaller SSDs.

Samsung shows an SSD with a capacity of a whopping 256 TB. The memory specialist presents it at the Flash Memory Summit in California. The SSD uses QLC-NAND and has a very high density to accommodate the volume.

Always more economical

Samsung believes the SSD has some advantages over lower-capacity copies. First, of course, there’s physical size: more terabytes in an SSD means more total capacity in a given server. The higher density would also be good for the environment and the savings account. Samsung states that the 256TB SSD consumes seven times less power than eight 32TB SSDs.

The drives are strictly for the server market and are being launched with AI workloads in mind, although that’s probably also because you can’t launch anything today without mentioning AI.

Other SSDs

Against this background, Samsung is also introducing a new SSD solution in the petabyte range. The manufacturer combines a huge storage capacity in a single device. This solution goes hand in hand with a software platform called Flexible Data Placement (FDP). FDP is open source and ensures that the SSD is optimally used in the petabyte range.

Finally, Samsung mentions the SSD PM1743. It’s been around since last year and has a capacity of up to 15.36 TB. For higher speeds, Samsung has now paired the drive with a PCIe 5.0 interface.