Ultra QLC: Sandisk shows roadmap for SSD 83 512-TB reviews
Image: Sanisk
While hard drives approach the mark of 40 TB of storage capacity with ACH and Noise, SSDs have already arrived at 128 TB. Sandisk plans to double this year and offer 512 TB from 2027. However, the manufacturer does not dare to make appointment forecasts for the first SSD from Petabyte (1000 TB).
The roadmap to 512 TB (and at some point 1 PB)
Parent company Western Digital had already presented a difficult roadmap last June, on which the destination of a corporate SSD with 1 petabyte storage volume or around 1,000 terabytes for the first time. Sandisk’s new roadmap does not yet provide a specific date for Petabyte’s SSD. However, something has changed for the coming years: now a 256TB SSD should be ready in the calendar year 2026 and not just in 2027.
During the recent investor day presentation, there was even talk of “early next year” for 256TB, but this should not apply to the market launch. Because the 128 TB SSD will only be delivered this year in the third quarter.
The roadmap is very ambitious, because Sandisk is already planning 512 TB for 2027. Here too it remains to be seen whether this already applies to the series product.
Ultra QLC with BICS8 and Custom Controller
The basis for the high storage capacities of the first 128 TB, then 256 TB and later 512 TB of the “Ultra QLC” platform form the new BICS8-QLC-NAND with the largest storage capacity of 2 TBIT (256 GB) by industry also as a QLC coordinated controller of the enterprise class.
The controller should have throttle units for certain tasks and up to 64 per channel should be able to control this. If this were to be possible up to 512 TB, as explained, 32 channels would be required. This is now a lot even for corporate controllers. Customer SSD controllers offer a maximum of 8 channels.
The product: the DC SN670
First, however, a maximum of 128 TB starts. This is happening with the new DC SN670 SSD series (DC for Data Center), which supports PCIE 5.0. This should perform faster than another “leading” 128TB SSD with QLC and PCIe 5.0. This is where only the Phison Pascari D205V is in question, which in turn uses BICS8-Flash. The Solidigm D5-P5336 and Samsung BM1743 also offer 128TB, but are significantly slower with PCIe 4.0.
Long not as much storage space, but potentially much better latencies and higher retention life thanks to TLC memory, the new Sandisk DC SN861 will deliver. Among other things, this should serve high performance and AI systems. The series has been certified for use in the network with NVIDIAS GB200 accelerators.
Topics: Enterprise Flash-Memory QLC Sandkisk Server SSD Storage Source: Sandikisk
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