What is the ESG Strategy Revealed by the Low-Power SSD Design Lead at Samsung Electronics?

[Asia Economy Reporter Suyeon Woo] Samsung Electronics has actively promoted its semiconductor sector ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) management strategy through its YouTube content 'Tomorrow Also Works Hard (ESG)'. The approach introduces stories about environmental management by meeting employees in various fields such as low-power semiconductors, air quality, wastewater management, landscaping, and renewable energy.

On the 19th, Samsung Electronics released an interview with Min Seongwon, a second-year employee at the Samsung Electronics Solution Development Office who develops low-power SSDs (Solid State Drives), on the YouTube channel 'Samsung Electronics Semiconductor'.

Since May, Samsung Electronics has released five stories featuring employees working in various environmental management sectors such as greenhouse gases, chemicals, landscaping, waste, and wastewater treatment. The sixth episode uploaded this time explains how the development of low-power SSDs helps reduce electricity consumption in our society.

Minsungwon Pro, responsible for low-power SSD semiconductor design at Samsung Electronics Semiconductor Solutions Development Office / Photo by Samsung Electronics Semiconductor YouTube

Recently, as businesses utilizing large-capacity data such as 5G and artificial intelligence (AI) have expanded, global IT companies' investments in data centers have been actively made. However, operating large-capacity servers requires additional electrical energy to cool the heat generated during operation.

For this reason, SSDs, which have higher power efficiency compared to HDDs (Hard Disk Drives), are being rapidly adopted as the main storage devices in data centers. It is estimated that replacing globally shipped server HDDs last year with the latest Samsung SSDs could save a total of 1,484 GWh (gigawatt-hours) of electricity. This amount exceeds the electricity consumption of Seoul citizens during the hot summer month of August.

Min is tasked with identifying and reducing unnecessary power consumption to improve the power efficiency of SSDs. Through SSD power consumption testing, he measures the total power consumed by each component and design circuit and optimizes unnecessary power consumption.

Min said, "The power savings from reducing the consumption of a single SSD I find may be minimal, but when expanded to the concept of data centers equipped with millions of SSDs, the impact is significant enough to affect the global climate environment." He emphasized, "I will strive to reduce carbon emissions and contribute to preventing global warming through continuous efforts to lower SSD power consumption."

Meanwhile, the 'Tomorrow Also Works Hard (ESG)' videos released by Samsung Electronics Semiconductor have attracted attention with an average of about one million views. The content title 'Tomorrow Also Works Hard (ESG)' is a pun combining the pronunciation of 'ESG' and the Korean phrase 'aesseuji' (meaning 'works hard').

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.