Samsung quietly announced that it is working on the next generation of SSD’s (Solid State Drives) with the upcoming PM9C1a. With the drive, the company intends to provide “increased computing and gaming performance in PCs and laptops” for everyday scenarios.
With that design philosophy in mind, the PM9C1a (opens in new tab) will feature the proven PCIe 4.0 (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) expansion bus for more consistent performance (PCIe 5.0 drives are a work in progress). To strengthen the older standard, the upcoming drive will be “integrated into a new controller based on Samsung’s … 5-nanometer process [and] Seventh generation V-NAND technology”. Put plainly, this means that the PM9C1a will have better performance and energy efficiency compared to previous offerings.
speed and efficiency
Samsung claims that the future drive can achieve sequential read speeds of 6,000 MB/s (megabytes per second) and sequential write speeds of 5,600 MB/s, making it almost twice as fast as the PM9B1 SSD. Read speed refers to how fast the drive can access stored files, while write speed refers to how fast it can “write” or save a file. For comparison, the Samsung 990 Pro, which was highly rated by TechRadar, has sequential read and write speeds of 7,465.79 MB/s and 6,887.68.19 MB/s, respectively. So, yes, the PM9C1a will be slower, but it comes pretty close, which is particularly impressive for a drive intended for general, everyday use. It’s not a top model.
As already mentioned, the energy efficiency has been improved compared to the PM9B1. It’s now “70 percent more [efficient] per watt than its predecessor.” Samsung gives the example that when a laptop with this SSD goes into “standby mode,” the drive consumes “about 10 percent less power.”
Security will also be increased as the PM9C1a will support the Device Identifier Composition Engine, or DICE for short, security standard. This gives the drive the ability to “safe [generate] cryptographic keys” as a way to provide device authentication. The idea is that it helps protect the computer from supply chain attacks and firmware tampered with by malicious actors.
Availability pending
Since the PM9C1a is still in development, it will probably be a while before it is released. The announcement says nothing about a release date or price; although we have reached out to Samsung for clarification. However, we do know that the SSDs will come in three different models based on storage capacity and size. The 256GB drive will have a 22mm x 30mm form factor, the 512GB model will be 22mm x 42mm, and the largest is the 1TB option at 22mm x 80mm.
While it may be a while before we see these SSDs in computers, expect them to end up in some of them at some point the best ultrabook laptops on the market.
