A first from Samsung a 5nm SSD controller
This past Thursday, Samsung introduced an all-new PM9C1a solid-state drive. What's the significance, you ask? It will use 5nm controller-class process technology, less power consumption for the entire storage drive. The PM9C1a storage drive point of focus is high-performance and mainstream laptops.
Regarding overall specifications and potential performance, Samsung's PM9C1a will offer up to 6 GB/s sequential read speed and up to 5.60 GB/s sequential write speed. Quite impressive for a mainstream drive that has a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface. In addition, you are provided up to 900 thousand and 1 million random reads and writes IOPS. The storage drive will come in 256GB, 5120 GB, and 1TB capacities. Each form factor is made for different laptops according to their design, which are M.2-22330, M.2-2242, and M.2-2280.
Let's focus on the 5mm-based controller because it's a unique feature of the PM9C1a drive. The new controller uses Samsung's 5nm-class nodes, and as mentioned earlier in the post, it is significantly more power efficient than past controllers and most storage drives on the market. This a remarkable feat, considering most SSD controllers on the market still use 12nm-class technology. Samsung has stated that the PM9C1a drive will offer up to 70% more power efficiency per watt than past PM9B1 using 10% less power during idle mode.
Interestingly, Samsung has implemented a robust security feature for the PM9C1a. The SSD supports a Device Identifier Composition Engine (DICE) security. It is created by the Trusted Computing Group, a global organization that develops open standards for computing security. DICE makes cryptographic keys within the SSD using strong authentication to protect against compromised supply chain attacks.
Before we close out this post, here's a quote from Samsung;
"Our new PM9C1a SSD will deliver a robust combination of superior performance, greater power efficiency, and increased security, which are the qualities that matter most to PC users," said Yong Ho Song, executive vice president of memory solution product & development at Samsung Electronics in a statement. "We are committed to creating storage that satisfies the diverse and changing market requirements as we continue to advance innovation in the PC SSD space."
