TECH NEWS – The South Korean tech giant is seeking independence from the ARM ecosystem, which is why it is developing a chip based on the RISC-V architecture.

ARM’s ecosystem is extensive and widespread; even Samsung’s latest Exynos 2600 chips use ARMv9.3 CPU cores. However, Samsung is cautiously taking its first steps toward the open-source RISC-V architecture with a custom SSD controller chip. Samsung’s upcoming BM9K1 SSD series, designed entirely in-house, will use a controller chip based on the RISC-V architecture.

This chip essentially serves as the “brain” of the SSD, managing the transfer of data between the host PC and the NAND flash memory. It also performs additional tasks, such as error correction, garbage collection, and wear leveling to ensure that data is evenly distributed across all NAND cells. Until now, Samsung has used ARM instruction sets in its SSD controller chips, incurring significant licensing fees. Furthermore, since Western Digital SSDs have used RISC-V-based SweRV cores in their controller chips for years, it was only a matter of time before Samsung made the switch, especially since doing so is an extremely sensible economic move.

Over the years, Samsung has attempted to integrate the RISC-V architecture into its wide range of products. However, none of these attempts made it past the demonstration phase. Thus, the BM9K1 SSDs represent Samsung’s first practical steps toward an open-source instruction set and hold exciting possibilities for the future. For instance, future Exynos chips could utilize RISC-V CPU cores instead of cores based on ARM’s intellectual property.

What does this mean? It’s simple: If Samsung develops the SSD controller chip in-house, the company will save money that would otherwise be paid to ARM. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that products will be cheaper. In fact, Samsung could apply a higher profit margin to its products to recoup its research and development costs.

Source: WCCFTech, ETNews, Western Digital