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

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.