Samsung Highlights the Importance of Open Collaboration in the AI Era with Energy-Efficient Data Center Infrastructure and Memory Solutions

Samsung Electronics participated in the second Open Compute Project (OCP) Asia-Pacific Regional Summit from September 3 to 4 in Suwon, South Korea. Returning as a headline sponsor for the event, Samsung showcased its pioneering memory solutions and data center innovations for the age of AI during a keynote speech and breakout sessions, with a booth display of its next-generation memory solutions.

OCP, the world’s largest technology innovation organization, was launched in 2011. The first OCP Regional APAC Summit took place in Seoul last year, marking the organization's debut event in the Asia-Pacific region. The OCP fosters open collaboration between industry leaders to rapidly innovate hardware and software designs that keep up with the pace of high-performance computing demands. The 2024 OCP Global Summit will be held in San Jose, California, from October 15 to 17.

Min Lee, Head of HPC Group at the Samsung Electronics Innovation Center, delivered a keynote speech titled “Samsung Innovation Center Powered by OCP.” Lee introduced Samsung’s new data center in South Korea, highlighting the collaboration with OCP to help spearhead infrastructure and power efficiency innovations for the AI era.

Samsung Introduces New Ultra-Efficient HPC Center

Technology is advancing rapidly with the rise of generative AI technology and Large Language Models (LLMs) in everyday life. These advancements are increasing the need for more powerful and energy-efficient data centers, which have become the foundation of the IT revolution.  

During a keynote speech, Samsung introduced its new High Performance Computing (HPC) Center in Hwaseong, South Korea. The facility is Korea’s largest data center, with 114 MW of electric capacity and 116,000 servers. The HCP Center was designed to understand the unique challenges customers face in the AI era and leverage these insights to drive product innovation. The center features an Underfloor Close Coupled (UCC) cooling system for maximized energy efficiency and uses Hot Aisle Containment to ensure a uniform distribution of cool air. With these innovations, the facility is targeting a Power Usage Effectiveness¹ score of 1.15. 

Why Data Centers Are Crucial for Samsung’s Advanced Memory Solutions

Data centers are vital tools that help Samsung innovate and improve product performance. Through test-bed monitoring, solutions can be tested in real-world conditions to strengthen product competitiveness, which also enables opportunities to identify and experiment with new products. Data centers also offer environments to evaluate and test custom reference architectures and implement cost-efficient solutions such as memory disaggregation.  

Collaborating with OCP to Overcome Data Center Challenges

Power consumption is the number one challenge for data centers. For AI servers that use a lot of GPUs, power consumption can reach up to 10 kW. The Hwaseong HPC Center addresses these challenges with its cooling technology and uses Open Rack Version 2 (ORV2) OCP-compliant servers for more efficient operations.

The ORV2 systems have been customized by increasing the number of power shelves from 1 to 2, allowing a total power capacity of up to 66 kW. To mitigate the risk of overheating, the ORV2’s busbar has been divided into two zones for increased thermal efficiency. It also uses an ORV2 integrated power shelf with DC 48V, resulting in roughly 5% power savings when idle and about 2% at full load. The added pipes and enlarged heatsinks allow high-TDP (Thermal Design Power) CPU models to operate. This innovation led to the reduced energy usage of our servers by 9% in an HPC environment using over 1K watts per server.

Memory Solutions Powering Breakthroughs

Samsung showcased four groundbreaking memory solutions at its booth, designed to meet performance requirements for AI applications. The HBM3E 12H DRAM is a high-bandwidth memory solution boasting high-capacity and ultra-fast performance speeds. The DDR5 RDIMM (Registered DIMM) is the industry’s highest-capacity memory module for generative AI servers, with efficient power consumption and robust performance for handling complex data workloads. 

Also on display was the 128TB BM1743 SSD, the highest-capacity quad-level cell (QLC) SSD, which provides high performance and ultra-low power consumption powered by 7th-gen V-NAND technology. Lastly, Samsung exhibited its CMM-D, a CXL² memory expander that seamlessly integrates into existing data centers to scale memory capacity at a minimal cost, optimizing data-intensive workloads.

Open Collaboration is the Backbone of Innovations for the AI Era

Since first participating in OCP events in 2015, Samsung has remained committed to contributing to the open-source ecosystem with hardware design and memory innovations to help propel the industry forward. Samsung is aligned with the OCP foundation's mission and will continue its collaborative effort to unlock future memory solutions and data center technology innovations for the emerging AI era.

_{¹ PUE is represented as a ratio—the overall efficiency increases as the value moves closer to 1.0.}

_{²Compute eXpress Link (CXL^™)}