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) and Western Digital (SN655) can offer 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.
