With the advent of AI PCs, high-speed, high-bandwidth memory performance is becoming increasingly important. SK Hynix, participating in the NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference (GTC), boasted a powerful memory solution for AI solutions.

SK Hynix announced on the 20th that it unveiled a consumer product based on 'PCB01', a new SSD product with the industry's highest performance, at 'GTC 2024', the world's largest AI developer conference hosted by NVIDIA, held in San Jose, California, USA from the 18th to the 21st (US time).

SK Hynix explained, “PCB01 is a PCIe 5th generation SSD to be installed in on-device AI PCs, and we have recently completed performance and stability verification of this product with major global customers.” It added, “We plan to complete development of PCB01 within the first half of this year and launch products for large customers and general consumers together within the year.”

■ LLM loading within 1 second, SSD optimized for AI PC

PCB01 is a product that has the industry's fastest speed, with a sequential read speed of 14GB (gigabytes) per second and a sequential write speed of 12GB per second. This is twice the speed of the previous generation, and is capable of loading the Large Language Model (LLM) required for AI learning and inference in less than 1 second.

To implement on-device AI, PC manufacturers store LLM in the PC's internal storage and design the structure to transfer data to DRAM within a short period of time when AI work begins. SK Hynix expects that in this process, PCB01 installed inside the PC will play a role in significantly improving the speed and quality of on-device AI while quickly supporting LLM loading.

PCB01 improves power efficiency by 30% compared to the previous generation, contributing to increased efficiency in large-scale AI computational tasks.

In particular, SK Hynix engineers applied 'SLC Caching' technology to this product. This is a technology that allows some of the cells, which are NAND storage areas, to operate as SLC with high processing speeds, allowing only necessary data to be read and written quickly. SLC caching also helps speed up general PC tasks in addition to AI services.

SK hynix Vice President Jae-yeon Yoon said, “PCB01 is the industry’s highest-performance product and will be in the spotlight not only in AI PCs but also in the high-spec PC market, including gaming and high-end PCs,” adding, “Through this, we will be able to solidify our position as the ‘Global No. 1 AI memory company’ not only in HBM but also in the on-device AI field.”

Meanwhile, SK Hynix showcased its next-generation flagship technologies and products, including 36GB 12-layer HBM3E, CXL, and GDDR7, in addition to PCB01, at GTC 2024.

SK Hynix previously announced on the 19th that it would begin mass production of HBM3E, the world's first 5th generation HBM product. GDDR7 was also introduced on-site, emphasizing that its bandwidth has been expanded by more than twice that of the previous generation product, GDDR6, and its power efficiency has been improved by 40%.