Samsung launches the SZ985 800GB Z-SSD

by Mark Tyson on 30 January 2018, 13:31

Tags: Samsung (005935.KS)

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Samsung has launched a new line of Z-SSDs which leverage its Z-NAND flash memory chips, and a 1.5GB RAM cache, for high performance, high reliability and ultra-low latency. The SZ985 800GB PCIe Z-SSD will target the storage needs of artificial intelligence (AI), big data and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

This premium SSD is a single-port, four-lane device. Samsung Z-NAND is said to provide “10 times higher cell read performance than 3-bit V-NAND chips”, and is accompanied on the SZ985 by 1.5GB LPDDR4 DRAM and a high performance controller. Reminding us of how much of a premium product this is, Jinman Han, SVP Memory Product Planning & Application Engineering at Samsung, said the leading-edge 800GB Z-SSD is likely to be deployed in “next-generation supercomputing systems in the near future”. Han added that Samsung would continue to push density to lead in the premium SSD market.

In performance metrics provided, Samsung says that the SZ985 offers a random read performance of 750K IOPS, random write speeds of up to 170K IOPS, and a write latency of 16 microseconds. Durability and reliability is also of great importance in storage devices and Samsung guarantees up to 30 drive writes per day (DWPD) for five years, or a total of 42 petabytes. The MTBF figure is two million hours. As a comparative reminder, the Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X Series offers 550K random read and write IOPS.

Samsung’s SZ985 SSD will come in the aforementioned 800GB capacity, and in a 240GB version, as a PCIe add-in card using a 4x PCIe 3.0 interface. Hardware will be on show at the ISSCC 2018 (International Solid-State Circuits Conference), in San Francisco, from 11- 15th February.



HEXUS Forums :: 8 Comments

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“SZ985 800GB Z-SSD”.

That name just rolls off the tongue!! :p
I doubt the price will tempt me away from my Intel 900p. (I got it free as a door prize at the product launch).
Samsung Marketing Dep.
…will target the storage needs of artificial intelligence (AI), big data and Internet of Things (IoT) applications…

I think that has covered all the latest hot industry buzzwords!

Artificial intelligence, especially machine learning makes sense. Datasets are relatively small, and budgets are large, so expensive high speed storage would be a wise investment.

Big data is a harder sell. Budgets are large, but when they are spread thinly to buy thousands of servers to store massive datasets, the emphasis shifts to finding efficient ways to process data despite using relatively cheap storage. Expensive devices like this would realy put a dent in even the largest budgets.

Where this SSD would make absolutely no sense is in IoT applications. Here we are talking about cheap plastic devices manufactured in vast numbers with every possible corner cut to reduce costs. (And dam the consequences for reliability, security and everything else). I can see absolutely no scenario where an expensive SSD would be specified over a cheap MicroSD card (that the end user must supply).

In other words, Samsung marketing are up to their usual exaggeration!
chrestomanci
Big data is a harder sell. Budgets are large, but when they are spread thinly to buy thousands of servers to store massive datasets, the emphasis shifts to finding efficient ways to process data despite using relatively cheap storage. Expensive devices like this would realy put a dent in even the largest budgets.
I believe the main interest for big data is for tiered storage on hot data machines.

chrestomanci
Where this SSD would make absolutely no sense is in IoT applications. Here we are talking about cheap plastic devices manufactured in vast numbers with every possible corner cut to reduce costs.
This is where they're stretching things a bit. Obviously this big chunky expensive PCIe card isn't going to fit in anyone's smart watch, but it does fit in the servers that provides IoT devices with data, but that's more a ‘big data’ situation.
The write speed is ahem nothing to write home aboot