Samsung and Western Digital to jointly develop ‘zoned storage’ systems

Samsung and Western Digital announce a partnership to develop zoned storage systems. It is the first time that the two competitors will collaborate on storage products in this way.

Samsung and Western Digital are both manufacturers of SSDs, HDDs and other storage devices. The two competitors announce in a press release that they will work together on a zoned storage system. Zoned storage lets SSDs store ‘smart’ data via zoned namespaces. That is the SSD equivalent of the technique that host-managed SMR HDDs use to determine how data can be stored most efficiently. These techniques sort data by type, so that the combination of SSDs and HDDs is optimally used when it comes to speed, energy consumption and lifespan.

The two companies are also striving for standardization of storage techniques, although the companies have not yet named any concrete actions in this area. However, Samsung and Western Digital together are a initiative started for zoned storage zns ssds and smr hdds. The manufacturers are working with the Storage Networking Industry Association and the Linux Foundation to develop new frameworks for zoned storage techniques.

The techniques are intended for enterprise use and data centers. By working together, Samsung and Western Digital hope to reduce fragmentation in the industry and prevent storage technologies from becoming unnecessarily complex for developers.