Samsung develops zNAND-T and zNAND-I flash for AI workloads
Korean outlet ZDNET Korea reports that Samsung Electronics is developing two NAND flash products tuned for AI workloads, zNAND-T and zNAND-I. zNAND-T stands for throughput, using TSV-stacked NAND dies to optimize read/write bandwidth for data-center AI silicon, an approach the report likens to the HBF concept proposed by SanDisk and SK hynix; zNAND-I refers to IOPS and targets random performance in scenarios with frequent small reads and writes, such as KV cache offloading. Separately, Samsung announced a next-generation memory and storage technology strategy for AI infrastructure spanning high-performance memory, Compute Express Link (CXL)-based storage expansion, and new-generation SSD data storage and management. Together with the previously disclosed zNAND-O, the three zNAND variants are positioned for different workloads, which the report frames as a shift from general-purpose NAND toward customization.
As AI inference splits storage demand between bandwidth and random access, customized NAND is emerging as a new route for memory makers into data-center AI infrastructure.