Samsung's Innovative PM9E1 Gen5 SSD Is Optimized For AI And NVIDIA DGX Spark

Remember the Samsung 9100 PRO? We reviewed it back in August. It's an amazing performer, and despite being a high-end PCI Express 5.0 SSD offering sequential speeds in excess of 13GB/second, it actually runs pretty cool thanks to the use of a custom 5nm "Presto" SSD controller. If you wanted an SSD 9100 PRO but you've only got an M.2-2242 slot—say, because you have a Lenovo Legion Go or DGX Spark—you were outta luck, at least until today.

That's because Samsung just announced a new iteration on its extant PM9E1 SSD (the B2B version of the 9100 PRO) that is both M.2-2242 and 4TB in capacity, a pairing it purports to be the first to achieve, at least in the space of PCIe 5.0 SSDs. From a cursory search, we indeed don't see any other SSDs that are all of PCIe 5.0, 42mm long, and 4TB in capacity, but that's partially because PCIe 5.0 SSDs in the M.2 2242 form factor are extremely sparse on the ground in the first place.

Samsung's press release makes a lot of noise about how this SSD is both AI-optimized and also optimized for AI, but the more interesting claim is that the PM9E1's firmware is optimized specifically for NVIDIA CUDA. We're not quite sure what that implies or how it even makes sense, but that's what Samsung says. That would naturally make it particularly appropriate for use in the DGX Spark micro-desktop, although one has to wonder why NVIDIA couldn't fit an M.2-2280 slot in the thing.


Samsung offers this comparison, which notes that the PM9E1 is more power-efficient than the previous-generation PM9A1a by using a "MB/s per watt" figure that obscures the fact that it actually uses around 12% more power under operation, but that's still quite impressive for a PCIe 5.0 SSD. Most PCIe 5.0 drives are power-thirsty and quite toasty as a result. The PM9E1 is still going to perform best with a big ol' heatsink on top, but at least it doesn't need active cooling.

So, alright; this release isn't as exciting or unusual as the "AutoSSD" that was announced along with it at CES, but it's arguably a lot more useful for more people. As we noted in the beginning, this is both the biggest and fastest SSD you can stick in a DGX Spark, as well as a few of the handhelds, like the Lenovo Legion Go. Now, Samsung, let's see you cram the PM9E1 into the 2230 form factor so we can shove it in our Steam Deck.