Samsung to unveil petabyte SSD subscription storage service for AI: Report

Samsung is set to announce its high-capacity SSD subscription storage service at Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference (GTC 2024), which is focused mostly on advancing artificial intelligence. Samsung will position its pay-as-you-go storage service as a solution for AI developers with growing storage needs. In addition, Samsung is also expected to announce its new 12Hi HBM3E memory that will be used by various next-generation AI and HPC GPUs at GTC, according to a report in Business Korea.

Modern business storage requirements are ever increasing and not all of these businesses can afford the upfront costs for high-capacity storage. To address such companies, Samsung is reportedly rolling out its high-capacity SSD subscription service that will enable companies to increase their storage capability when they need it without buying expensive solid-state storage systems. 

The central part of Samsung's high-capacity SSD subscription storage service will be the company's petabyte (PB)-level SSD solution, known as PBSSD. As the name implies, PBSSD can store at least one petabyte of data, or 1000TB. Samsung's highest-capacity drives to date can store 256 TB of data, so PB SSD quadruples that. Because far not every customer needs a petabyte of storage, the storage device is designed to be multi-user friendly. 

PBSSD leverage Samsung's technology known as Flexible Data Placement (FDP), which has been approved in NVMe standards. FDP is a method designed to enhance data placement, leading to greater predictability and performance in real-world hyperscale workloads.

The Samsung subscription service is designed to alleviate the financial burden on customers by eliminating the need for a large initial investment in storage infrastructure, according to Business Korea. Samsung will not only provide storage, but will naturally offer storage management, maintenance, security, and seamless upgrades. This vast storage capacity, combined with the subscription model, offers an economically viable solution for managing and expanding storage needs. 

With this new service, Samsung will be competing against established players in the cloud storage business, such as Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft Azure. It remains to be seen whether the company can indeed be competitive against these companies and what benefits its service will offer.