Samsung presents first ZNS SSD

Samsung is now the second well-known manufacturer to enter the ZNS-SSD market. Let’s take a look at what the Koreans are up to with their PM1731a.

Pioneering future for large storage devices

The abbreviation ZNS stands for Zoned Namespaces and describes a completely new technique to address fast flash memory. Here, it is the task of the host controller to do a lot of processes itself, which are done by the SSD itself in classic SSDs. One classic task is probably the presorting of relevant data. In the end, this should primarily bring one thing – accelerated work. After all, storage processes should run faster and drops in maximum speeds should only occur at a later point in time.

Another advantage is that the ZNS-SSD can focus on the essentials. Since no reserve is needed in the flash memory to be able to perform overprovisioning, the entire memory is actually available as storage space. Calculated on a large scale, this can mean many additional terabytes of storage. Finally, the future of ZNS SSDs is only in large data centers for the foreseeable future. Conventional desktop PCs and notebooks will continue to rely on classic SSDs – for now, at least.

After WD now also Samsung

The well-known storage manufacturer Western Digital (WD) is considered a real pioneer in the field of ZNS SSDs. After all, the company introduced its first flash storage that relies on this very technology almost half a year ago. Samsung now does the same and wants to launch its PM1731a as a 2 TB as well as a 4 TB version. Mass production of the somewhat different SSD is supposed to start in the second half of the year. It is not yet known how expensive the whole thing will be. Samsung has not yet made any public announcements about the purchase prices. However, this underlines that we are in the business segment here and the SSDs are not intended for private customers anyway.