Subj : Samsung and AMD made a revolutionary SSD together - then it was l
To   : All
From : TechnologyDaily
Date : Tue Sep 16 2025 15:15:10

Samsung and AMD made a revolutionary SSD together - then it was left to 
wither in the shadows and nobody knows exactly why

Date:
Tue, 16 Sep 2025 14:04:00 +0000

Description:
Computational storage drives looked attractive on paper so what happened next?

FULL STORY
======================================================================Samsung 
used AMD's Xilinx FPGA to power its SmartSSD storage device It promised to 
reduce enterprises' reliance on servers Computational storage devices, 
however, have faded just as Generative AI surged 

Samsung came up with the concept of a SmartSSD back in 2018, before 
generative AI kicked off. This computational storage drive would power 
server-less computing, bringing compute closer to where data is stored. 
SmartSSD had NAND , HBM and RDIMM memory sitting next to a FPGA accelerator 
in the SSD itself. That FPGA was built by Xilinx, which AMD purchased in 
October 2020. 

Fast forward to 2025 and the SmartSSD has all but disappeared from Samsungs 
portfolio. You can still buy them from Amazon (and others) under the AMD 
Xilinx brand (rather than Samsungs) for $517.70 with a 3.84TB capacity. 

The fact that it is a Gen3 SSD and the novel but complicated nature of the 
hardware made it a difficult sell. Then came the double whammy of COVID-19 
and AI; the latter, more than anything else, is probably why Samsung gave up 
on CSDs. 

Generative AI demanded another kind of computational resource that CSDs 
simply couldnt deliver then and while LLMs need SSDs, storage capacity, 
rather than compute features, was what it was all about. 

Put it simply, CSD represented an interesting but niche market, one thats 
closer to traditional servers. It was nice but didnt have the explosive 
growth potential of AI-related hardware. Thats why I think Samsung mothballed 
it after its second generation, despite the company positing that the 
computational storage market has great potential in 2022. Whats next for CSD? 

The dedicated page on SNIAs website, the group that oversees the 
standardization of computational storage, shows little progress since the 
launch, in October 2023, of a CS API. A video released in 2024 by the 
co-chairs of SNIAs CS technical working group mentions a version 1.1 that is 
under development. 

One of its staunchest proponents, Scaleflux , changed its about us page to 
omit computational storage in its entirety. Instead, it focusses on 
delivering products that use CS under the hood. Its CSD5000 enterprise SSD, 
for example, has a physical capacity of 122.88TB but a logical capacity of 
256TB (with a compression ratio of approximately 2:1) mentioned in the small 
print . That is achieved using onboard compute. 

Given the growing importance of AI inference, it would make sense to have 
some of it done as close as possible to where the data lives, that is on the 
SSD. With ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) getting more 
popular thanks to hyperscalers ( Google , Microsoft ) and AI companies ( 
OpenAI ), the market for enterprise inference-friendly AI SSDs - especially 
at the edge - could open up sooner rather than later. You might also like 
These are the best NAS devices around Largest SSDs and hard drives of 2025 
We've rounded up the best cloud storage services on offer



======================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/pro/samsung-and-amd-made-a-revolutionary-ssd-togethe
r-then-it-was-left-to-wither-in-the-shadows-and-nobody-knows-exactly-why


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