Massive 61TB NVMe SSD for Data Centers Coming Later This Year – News Block

Looking forward: As PCIe 5.0 SSD speeds rapidly increase and PCIe 4.0 SSD prices continue to fall, the enterprise market is pushing new boundaries for storage. Data centers are starting to see fast 30TB SSDs, with models set to double that capacity later this year.

Solidigm has revealed an enterprise-focused PCIe SSD that it intends to offer in sizes ranging from 7.68TB to 61.44TB. These higher capacities can reduce the physical size and cost of today’s data center drive arrays.

The PCIe 4.0 D5-P5336 is the world’s first quad-tier cell SSD, with 7GB/s sequential read speed and 3.1GB/s sequential write speed. The product page states that those numbers allow for just over 1 million 4K read IOPs and 31,000 16K write IOPs. Solidigm first revealed its plans to manufacture 61.44TB storage devices at Tech Field Day 2022 last November.

The drive is now available in the E1.L form factor in 15.36TB and 30.72TB capacities. The company plans to ship the E1.L and U.2 models with 61.44TB later this year, with a 30.72TB E3.S variant sometime in the first half of 2024.

Solidigm designed the D5-P5336 to meet the growing demands of AI, machine learning, and content delivery workloads. All of these tasks require storing and moving huge data sets.

Higher capacity drives can reduce the physical size and power footprint of drive arrays. The company claims that the D5-P5336 drops significantly compared to TLC and HDD arrays.

With power and cooling costs reduced by 125 percent in a rack just over half the size, Solidigm’s new units could reduce total cost of ownership (TOC) by 17 percent compared to a fully TLC array, assuming both deployments are 100PB. In contrast to an HDD array, the D5-P5336 could cut power and cooling costs nearly five times with a rack one-sixth the size for 47 percent lower TOC. The savings are most dramatic compared to hybrid arrays: a power and cooling cost reduction of up to 600 percent in a rack one-seventh the size, resulting in a 61 percent lower TOC.

The 30.72TB model currently available puts Solidigm in direct competition with Micron, which launched a similarly sized data center SSD in May (compared in the chart above). Solidigm’s drive has slightly faster read speeds, but uses 20 percent more power.