SK Hynix develops SSD for AI PCs to be mass-produced this year

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 it has developed PCB01, an SSD product with the industry’s top specifications, optimized for on-device AI PCs. On-device AI 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) to the product to achieve better performance — an industry first.

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 the SK Hynix N-S Committee, a strategic unit for NAND flash and solution businesses.

“We will work toward enhancing our leadership as the global top AI memory provider also in the NAND solution space by successfully completing 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 global market. HBM has become an essential part of the AI boom, providing a faster processing speed than traditional memory chips.

MASS PRODUCTION IN 2024

The company plans to mass-produce PCB01 and begin shipping this year to both corporate and general consumers, 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 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.

The SSD improves power efficiency by over 30% compared with 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, allows users to experience faster performance in 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, into the SSD to prevent external cyberattacks, forgery and information falsification while also protecting a user’s password.

Write to Eui-Myung Park at uimyung@hankyung.com
 
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.