With the launch of AMD's new second generation "Rome" EPYC processors, AMD's numerous hardware partners have been lining up to announce their own wares built around the new processors. And this doesn't just go for OEMs and integrators, but it also extends to component suppliers who have been eagerly awaiting the first x86 server processor with PCIe 4.0 support. To that end, yesterday Samsung sent out an announcement confirming that their previously announced PM1733 enterprise SSD supports AMD's new processors, and that just in time for inclusion in Rome systems, they'll be shipping this quarter.

Samsung first announced the PM1733 last fall, as part of its general SSD roadmap update for the then-forthcoming year. The PM1733 is the successor to their PM1723b enterprise SSD, and is designed to take advantage of the bandwidth advances provided by PCIe 4.0. Based on the company’s proprietary controller and paired with 512 Gb 5th Generation V-NAND memory chips, the drive family is rated for read speeds of up to 8 GB/second.

Interestingly, Samsung is offering both PCIe 4.0 x4 and x8 versions of the SSDs, with the U.2 versions using a x4 interface while the alf-length half-height (HHHL) card versions will use x8. The U.2 drives with dual-port capability will offer capacities of up to 30.72 TB, whereas the HHHL cards will carry up to 15.36 TB of useful V-NAND flash.

Overall, Samsung's focus on the drive in terms of specifications is on the drive's read performance rather than its write performance. Along with its 8 GB/sec rated sequential read speed, Samsung says the PM1733 can handle random reads of up to 1500K IOPS, which would make the PM1733 among the fastest drives announced so far.

Samsung will start shipments of its PM1733 SSDs this quarter. Among x86 platforms, the PCIe 4.0 capabilities of the drives will only be available on AMD EPYC 7002 and AMD Ryzen 3000 platforms, but the devices will also work with current PCIe 3.0 platforms from Intel and AMD. The manufacturer has not disclosed prices of the new PM1733 SSDs so far.

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Source: Samsung

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  • romrunning - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    "Overall, Samsung's focus on the drive in terms of specifications is on the drive's read performance rather than its write performance."

    Why do you say that it's focused on read perf rather than write perf? I can't find any specs or tests that would show it's primarily focused on read.
  • Ryan Smith - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    Right now the only published figures are for read performance. They don't even publish write figures.
  • romrunning - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    Yeah, I didn't see it on Samsung's press release either. The press release promised "double the throughput capabilities of current Gen 3 SSDs", so it will interesting if that also applies to write performance versus just read.
  • CrystalCowboy - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    "The SSD leverages an upgraded dual-port PCIe Gen4 interface to push up to 8/3.8GB/s of sequential read/write throughput"
    Tom's Oct 18, 2018
    https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-qlc-z-na...
  • CrystalCowboy - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    The read specs are great, but the write speed doesn't really take full advantage of PCIe 4, even at x4. Would like to see a comparison to the Micron 9300.
    On a tangent, I still haven't seen anyone offering a 10G ethernet interface on a PCIe 4 x1 card.
  • kingpotnoodle - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    There isn't much demand for 10Gb in the home environment, 2.5Gb and 5Gb speeds are an attempt to bridge the gap. Most professional workstations and servers I've seen generally have several x4/x8/x16 slots rather than x1/x2 so the demand for a PCIe 4.0 x1 10Gb card is probably quite small but I'm sure there will be some good choice eventually.
  • schujj07 - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    Until you can get a dual port 10GbE card on an x1 card it doesn't matter very much. That and 10GbE is being quickly replaced by 25GbE. However, PCIe 4.0 will allow for dual port 25GbE cards on an x4 slot which is nice.
  • beginner99 - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    5gb also works with normal ethernet cables. But still even 2.5gb is useless right now. I can't even find a consumer switch with 2.5 or 5gb and all the other ones even with just 4-5 ports are huge and expensive while 1gb switches cost like $20 and are tiny.
  • Zibi - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    There is netgear gaming switch with 2 * 10 gb ports and 8 * 1 gb. It's called sx 10. It even supports link aggregation.
  • repoman27 - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    There are a few options, but you do have to resolve yourself to ~$80 / port pricing. Multi-Gig / NBASE-T makes the most sense by far for home / SOHO setups.

    Netgear has the GS110MX (unmanaged) and GS110EMX ("Smart Managed Plus") with 2x 100M/1G/2.5G/5G/10G ports and 8x 1G for $200 if you just want to dip your toes. Then there's the unmanaged XS508M with 7x 100M/1G/2.5G/5G/10G ports and 1x 1G/10G SFP combo port for $500. And the smart managed plus XS512EM with 12x 100M/1G/2.5G/5G/10G ports and 2x SFP ports for $940.

    Ubiquiti also has the UniFi Switch 6 XG PoE with 4x 100M/1G/2.5G/5G/10G ports and 2x SFP ports along with 60 W / port 802.3bt PoE for $599.

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