Samsung quietly launches 61.44TB SSD, talks about a 122.88TB model

News
By
published

One of the world's highest-capacity SSDs has been released without fanfare.

Samsung BM1743 SSD
(Image credit: Samsung)

Samsung has quietly introduced its new BM1743 solid-state drive, designed for datacenter-grade read-intensive storage applications and offering a combination of capacity of up to 61.44TB and a relatively high performance enabled by a PCIe 4.0/5.0 x4 interfaces. In addition to its first 60TB-class SSD, Samsung also envisions 120TB-class drives using the same type of 3D V-NAND memory. 

Samsung's BM1743 is based on the company's proprietary controller that supports both PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0 x4 host interfaces as well as the company's 7th Generation V-NAND (3D NAND) QLC memory. From a performance point of view, the BM1743 offers a sustained sequential read speed of 7,200 MB/s as well as a sustained sequential write speed of 2,000 MB/s. As for random performance, Samsung specifies up to 1.6 million 4K random reads as well as up to 110,000 4K random writes, which is barely in line with the industry's best SSDs, but is good enough for its target applications. 

Samsung's 61.44TB SSD is aimed at ultra-high-density read-intensive storage applications, such as AI inference on the edge or content delivery. To that end, their write endurance is 0.26 drive writes per day, which is logical as these drives will be rewritten very rarely, if ever. 

Samsung plans to offer its BM1743 drives in a U.2 form factor for hosts with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and in an E3.S form factor with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface. Given the performance numbers specified for its BM1743 by Samsung, a PCIe Gen5 interface is hardly required, but the manufacturer has to ensure that it is compatible with a wide range of machines. 

Unfortunately, Samsung does not disclose the power consumption of its BM1743 61.44TB SSD, which could be quite high. Yet, given that the storage density of the drive is its main selling feature, power consumption may not be the most important factor. 

As noted by Blocks & Files, Samsung's BM1743 61.44TB SSD has very few rivals on the market. At present, only Solidigm (D5-P5336) offers 61.44TB capacity with a PCIe interface. Other developers of high-capacity high-performance SSDs, such as Kioxia, Micron, and SK hynix yet have to introduce their 60TB-class SSDs so, for now, three companies can enjoy their unique position on the market.

See more SSDs News
TOPICS
Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

48 Comments Comment from the forums
  • SB99
    How much? Asking for a friend... 😂
    Reply
  • Greg7579
    I am a photographer and use 8TB SSDs - not in an array, but individually. I need at least 12 TB and 16 would be great. I have several 8TB Samsung SATA SSDs (those are getting cheaper and are slow, but still 4 times faster than spinning rust) and 2 or 3 very expensive 8TB PCIE 4 M.2 SSDs.
    I am shocked that there is not more demand for some higher capacity SSDs. I predicted 3 years ago that by now we would have 16 TB PCIe 4 M.2 SSDs for less than 400 bucks. Boy was I wrong. We are stuck in the mud at 8TB.
    Reply
  • JJEvans25
    Samsung? Hard pass. I wouldn't pay $20, and even then, I wouldn't trust any data storage for more than a year. Samsung products are typically buggy with poor firmware and worse support. Samsung products are prone to failure within 2-3 years in my experience, doesn't matter whether it's a TV, smartphone, SSD, or HDD. YMMV but I doubt it will.
    Reply
  • wawaplanets
    JJEvans25 said:
    Samsung? Hard pass. I wouldn't pay $20, and even then, I wouldn't trust any data storage for more than a year. Samsung products are typically buggy with poor firmware and worse support. Samsung products are prone to failure within 2-3 years in my experience, doesn't matter whether it's a TV, smartphone, SSD, or HDD. YMMV but I doubt it will.
    You made an account 20 minutes ago to write this comment lol. You are so demonstrably wrong and an obvious troll. Leave.
    Reply
  • Greg7579
    That is not even remotely true. Samsung makes great products (especially TVs, refrigerators, SSDs, tablets, etc. You are being pretty obvious there.
    That said, we all get mad at major manufacturers of electronics from time to time when stuff breaks. I have a good friend who is a successful professional who boycotted Samsung 6 years ago because some local repair service on a refrigerator warranty gave him the run around on a faulty icemaker. He was furious that the icemaker broke on a 6-month-old Samsung refrigerator, and it took them 2 weeks to fix it. Now he won't get a Samsung TV, even though those are outstanding. LOL. (Replying to wawaplanets who slammed Samsung across the board.)
    Reply
  • ThomasKinsley
    Since we're all trading Samsung stories, I know someone who has used Samsung SSDs for around 11 years now (how time flies), and they still work. Their Crucial 2.5'' SSD failed and their external spindle disk drives of another name brand failed, but not the Samsung SSDs. My own Samsung SSD has been working 8 years straight now. No complaints. Except for the recent firmware issue on the 2TB 980 Pro, I don't see anything wrong with Samsung drives.
    Reply
  • Math Geek
    PLEASE DON"T FEED THE TROLL!!!

    how bout we go back to the obvious question :)

    how much does it cost? cause i pretty sure i can convince myself i need such space in my pc. probably more than one of them, lol
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    Math Geek said:
    how much does it cost? cause i pretty sure i can convince myself i need such space in my pc. probably more than one of them, lol
    16TB SSD, or late model used car.
    You decide....:ROFLMAO:
    Reply
  • bit_user
    The article said:
    One of the world's highest-capacity SSDs has been released without fanfare.
    What do you mean by "quietly"? Are you just saying it launched without a dedicated press release? Is it that uncommon for datacenter products?

    They did make a blog post for it, which the article linked. So, it's not like they just added it to their catalog without telling anybody.

    At present, only Solidigm (D5-P5336) and Western Digital (SN655) can offer 61.44TB capacity with a PCIe interface.
    Uh, that's still two and means they're hardly the first to reach this milestone.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    SB99 said:
    How much? Asking for a friend... 😂
    Since it's probably aimed at competing with this drive from Solidigm, I'd say somewhere in the ballpark of $7.6k.
    https://www.provantage.com/solidigm-sbfpf2bv614t001~7SLDG04N.htm
    If that's too rich for your blood, consider this 31 TB option, at $3.2k:
    https://www.provantage.com/solidigm-sbfpfwbv307t001~7SLDG049.htm
    Both QLC drives, though. And in either case, you'd want to have some kind of backup or redundancy solution, because SSDs tend to fail hard when they fail.

    A year ago, I snapped up one of these (new; full warranty) for less than half the current price:
    https://www.provantage.com/solidigm-ssdpf2kx038t1n1~7SLDG02U.htm
    The only bad thing about it is the high idle power (about 5W, according to specs). In order to provide the lowest latency, it doesn't support ASPM. It's like a sprinter who's always crouched at the starting line, waiting to pounce on new requests as soon as they arrive.
    Reply