Samsung starts mass producing its fastest SSD to date — PM9E1 Gen 5 M.2 drive with speeds up to 14.5 GB/s

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The PM9E1 is rated for 2,400 TBW (Terabytes written) in its lifespan, which is twice the 1,200 TBW of its predecessor, the PM9A1

Samsung PM9E1 NVMe Gen 5 SSD
(Image credit: Samsung)

Samsung has revealed that its PM9E1 NVMe Gen 5 SSD has started mass production after being announced late last month. The news came in a since-removed blog post, which was republished on TechPowerUp. The Samsung PM9E1 SSD is a successor to the NVMe Gen 4 Samsung PM9A1 launched in April 2021, and more than doubles both read speed and write speed. Additionally, the durability rating (TBW, or Terabytes Written in lifespan) has now doubled to 2,400 TBW, compared to the PM9A1's 1,200 TBW, which should make for a fairly reliable long-term storage drive.

The last-gen NVMe Gen 4 Samsung PM9A1 was limited to 7 GB/s read and 5.2 GB/s write. Comparatively, we now see the Gen 5 Samsung PM9E1 achieving a whopping 14.5 GB/s read and 13 GB/s write, which is not only clearing its Gen 4 predecessors, but keeping write speed in much closer parity with reads than Samsung managed last time.

According to YongCheol Bae, executive vice president of memory product planning at Samsung, "Our PM9E1 integrated with a 5nm controller delivers industry-leading power efficiency and utmost performance validated by our key partners. In the rapidly-growing on-device AI era, Samsung's PM9E1 will offer a robust foundation for global customers to effectively plan their AI portfolios." This drive is meant to target both consumers and the enterprise, but a lot of the official speak does seem to lean toward enterprise demand, particularly in AI.

The PM9E1 is being launched in four capacities: 512 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB. The company says that the 4 TB model is aimed at PC users who need plenty of space for AI-generated material, as well as gaming, high-resolution video, and other intense tasks and large files.

According to Samsung, the power efficiency of the PM9E1 has also improved in power efficiency by over 50% compared to last-gen, which the company says should help with battery life, including when running AI tasks on-device. Several security features, including Device Authentication and Firmware Tampering Attestation, have also been added to the drive through the updated Security Protocol and Data Model (SPDM) Version 1.2.

It's unclear why Samsung pulled the press release, but it seems that this new drive is coming soon, and we hope to have more concrete information in the near future. There's no pricing or a firm release date yet, but we hope to have that soon.

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Christopher Harper
Christopher Harper
Contributing Writer

Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.

8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • in_the_loop
    Wow. With 14.8 GB/s it is actually faster than the late gen of DDR3 memories that ran at 1600 Mhz that had a transfer rate of 12.8 GB/s and not far from the launch speed of DDR4 that was at 2133 MHz and 17 GB/s!

    The 1600 Mhz (or MT/s to be correct) memory would bottleneck the SSD. That could be in a machine that still runs a Sandy Bridge CPU that has DD3 memory in it!
    Not that anybody would, but it is still fascinating that the SSD:s are getting this fast.
    Then it maybe is another matter that they don't work the same and in practice it would only bottleneck in some specific scenarios with continuous transfer of large files.
    Then again, the fastest DDR5 memories are several times faster now than 14.8 GB/s...
    And most people wouldn't benefit from these faster SSD:s anyway...
    Reply
  • Notton
    Is it 2400TBW for 1TB or the 4TB model?
    Reply
  • ThisIsMe
    It’s so fast you could wear it out in less than two days.

    Seriously, stupid. They need to stop with these specially binned, super fast, low capacity drives that are overpriced. Just give us those cheaper higher capacity drives that have been promised for years with every marketing post about how the next 100,000 layer process will allow the production of unprecedented capacities.

    Yeah, just one let down after another.
    Reply
  • nitrium
    ThisIsMe said:
    Seriously, stupid. They need to stop with these specially binned, super fast, low capacity drives that are overpriced. Just give us those cheaper higher capacity drives that have been promised for years with every marketing post about how the next 100,000 layer process will allow the production of unprecedented capacities.
    I sort of agree with your point here. I would love to replace my 20TB HDD NAS with a much smaller footprint, more energy efficient, and faster SSD solution for the same or less cost. We don't always need the fastest ever controller, or the best endurance, what about just cheap bulk storage NAND, that would give affordable 8TB SSDs?
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    Last week have some 8tb u.2/u.3 new for 400us on ebay ;) very affordable
    Reply
  • Konomi
    ThisIsMe said:
    It’s so fast you could wear it out in less than two days.

    Seriously, stupid. They need to stop with these specially binned, super fast, low capacity drives that are overpriced. Just give us those cheaper higher capacity drives that have been promised for years with every marketing post about how the next 100,000 layer process will allow the production of unprecedented capacities.

    Yeah, just one let down after another.
    But when is the average person going to write that much data for it to die in such a short amount of time? They're not. SATA SSDs are still viable for bulk storage - not the fastest mind you, but they work. And for non-critical tasks (like storing a music library), you don't need high speed anyway. Most people are going to run into the issue of their ISP's speed or their own local network before you'll really benefit from faster bulk storage.
    Reply
  • newtechldtech
    in_the_loop said:
    Wow. With 14.8 GB/s it is actually faster than the late gen of DDR3 memories that ran at 1600 Mhz that had a transfer rate of 12.8 GB/s and not far from the launch speed of DDR4 that was at 2133 MHz and 17 GB/s!

    The 1600 Mhz (or MT/s to be correct) memory would bottleneck the SSD. That could be in a machine that still runs a Sandy Bridge CPU that has DD3 memory in it!
    Not that anybody would, but it is still fascinating that the SSD:s are getting this fast.
    Then it maybe is another matter that they don't work the same and in practice it would only bottleneck in some specific scenarios with continuous transfer of large files.
    Then again, the fastest DDR5 memories are several times faster now than 14.8 GB/s...
    And most people wouldn't benefit from these faster SSD:s anyway...
    They are not as fast as memory , this is ONLY sequential read/write , which is 1% of how DDRAM works ... IOPS speed is the key here and DDR3 is waaay faster than any SSD ....
    Reply
  • snemarch
    Konomi said:
    But when is the average person going to write that much data for it to die in such a short amount of time? They're not. SATA SSDs are still viable for bulk storage - not the fastest mind you, but they work. And for non-critical tasks (like storing a music library), you don't need high speed anyway. Most people are going to run into the issue of their ISP's speed or their own local network before you'll really benefit from faster bulk storage.
    Around here, the prices of SATA SSD and NVMe storage (for the same capacity, major brands) are almost identical, which would make it feel insane buying SATA storage.

    I wouldn't mind SATA-600 throughput if I could have much larger capacity at lower cost, while still having high endurance and low latency.
    Reply