(Courtesy of SK Hynix)
South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc. introduced a solid-state drive (SSD) for on-device artificial intelligence PCs for mass production this year to expand its memory leadership in the AI sphere beyond the high-performance DRAM segment into the NAND solution sector.
SK Hynix, the world’s No. 2 memory chipmaker after Samsung Electronics Co., said on Friday that it has developed PCB01, an SSD product with the industry’s best specifications, optimized for on-device AI PCs. On-device AI is a technology that implements AI functions on the device itself, instead of going through computation by a physically separated server.
The supplier to Nvidia Corp., the global AI chip leader, applied the fifth generation of eight-channel peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) for the first time in the industry to the product for better performance.
Global makers of central processing units (CPUs) for on-device AI PCs are already requesting collaboration for the compatibility validation, said Ahn Hyun, head of SK Hynix N-S Committee, a strategic unit for the NAND flash and solution businesses.
“We will work towards enhancing our leadership as the global top AI memory provider also in the NAND solution space by successfully completing the customer validation and mass production of PCB01, which will be in the limelight,” said Ahn in a statement.
SK Hynix is the dominant player in the advanced high bandwidth memory (HBM) segment, controlling over 70% of the market globally. HBM has become an essential part of the AI boom, providing much faster processing speed than traditional memory chips.
MASS PRODUCTION IN 2024
The company plans to mass-produce PCB01 and start shipping to both corporate customers and general consumers this year with a validation process with a global PC maker underway. SK Hynix plans to launch PCB01 in three capacities – 512 gigabytes (GB), 1 terabyte (TB) and 2TB.
PCB01 comes with the capabilities of sequential read and write speeds of 14GB and 12GB per second, respectively, allowing the operation of a large language model (LLM) for AI training and inference in a second, SK Hynix said.
(Courtesy of SK Hynix)
The SSD improves power efficiency by more than 30%, compared with the existing products, enhancing the stability of large-scale AI computing tasks, according to the company.
SK Hynix adopted single-level cell (SLC) caching for PCB01 production. The technology, which places SLC in some parts of the NAND cell, enables users to experience faster performance for both AI services and conventional computing, the company said.
PCB01 is also equipped with personal data protection features. SK Hynix engineers built the root of trust (ROT), a security solution, in the SSD to prevent external cyberattacks, as well as forgery and falsification of information while protecting a user’s password.
By Eui-Myung Park
uimyung@hankyung.com
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.
