SK Hynix Develops High-Performance SSD for AI PCs... Mass Production Scheduled Within the Year

Proceeding with Certification Work for Global PC Clients

SK Hynix announced on the 28th that it has developed the industry's highest-performance solid-state drive (SSD) 'PCB01' to be installed in on-device artificial intelligence (AI) PCs. The new product is expected to go into mass production within the year once customer certification is completed.

SK Hynix's new solid-state drive (SSD) 'PCB01' launched for on-device AI PCs /
[Photo by SK Hynix]

SSD is an auxiliary storage device that replaces the existing hard disk drive (HDD) and includes NAND flash and a controller. On-device AI is a technology that implements AI within the device itself without relying on computations from physically distant servers.

SK Hynix applied the 8-channel PCIe (high-speed input/output interface) 5th generation standard to the PCB01 to enhance performance, including data processing speed. Channels refer to the number of data input/output (I/O) pathways between the NAND and controller inside the SSD; increasing the number of channels improves data processing speed.

The continuous read and write speeds of the PCB01 are 14 gigabytes (GB) and 12GB per second, respectively, making it the highest-performing PC SSD product. This speed is sufficient to operate large language models (LLM) required for AI training and inference within one second. Power efficiency has improved by more than 30% compared to the previous generation.

SLC caching technology, which operates some of the NAND storage cells as single-level cells (SLC), has also been applied. NAND types vary depending on how many bits of data are stored in a single cell. SLC refers to storing one bit per cell and is characterized by faster processing speeds.

The company is conducting new product certification with global PC customers. Once certification is completed, it plans to release products for both large customers and general consumers through mass production within the year. The product lineup includes three capacities: 512GB, 1 terabyte (TB), and 2TB.

Hyun Ahn, Vice President of SK Hynix (in charge of the N-S Committee), said, "This new product has significantly improved performance compared to the previous generation, and we have received requests for compatibility verification collaboration from several companies producing central processing units (CPUs) for on-device AI PCs. We will smoothly proceed with customer certification and mass production to solidify our position as the world’s number one AI memory leader in NAND solutions."

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