Samsung announced the release of the enterprise-grade BM1743 SSD, offering a maximum capacity of 61.44TB. It features 176-layer QLC flash memory and employs the 7th generation V-NAND technology. The previous generation, the BM1733 SSD, was released in 2020 and used 96-layer QLC flash with 5th generation V-NAND technology, with a maximum capacity of 15.36TB. Clearly, the storage density of the BM1743 has significantly improved.
Samsung states that the BM1743 also achieves a twofold increase in performance compared to the BM1733, providing maximum sequential read/write speeds of 7200 MB/s and 2000 MB/s, respectively, and maximum random read/write speeds of 1600K IOPS and 110K IOPS. This makes it suitable for read-intensive workloads. Despite offering higher storage density with quad-level cells (QLC), it delivers performance levels close to that of triple-level cells (TLC), presenting a powerful solution for data centers.
The BM1743 SSD is available in two form factors: U.2 and E3.S. The former supports the PCIe 4.0 interface, with capacities up to 61.44TB and potential expansion to 122.88TB; the latter supports the PCIe 5.0 interface, further enhancing performance. In comparison, the BM1733 only supports the PCIe 3.0 interface. In terms of reliability, the BM1743 offers 0.26 DWPD and three months of power-off data retention, whereas the BM1733 offers 0.18 DWPD and one month of power-off data retention.
Recently, as energy efficiency has become a priority for AI inference servers, the demand for enterprise-grade QLC SSDs has surged, benefiting companies like Solidigm the most. Samsung hopes the BM1743 will directly compete with Solidigm’s D5-P5430, released last year, and help reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) for data centers.
