Western Digital Corp. today announced that its PCIe Gen 5 DC SN861 E.1S enterprise-class NVMe SSDs have been certified to support the NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 rack-scale system.

The rapid rise of AI, ML, and large language models (LLMs) is creating a challenge for companies with two opposing forces. Data generation and consumption are accelerating, while organizations face pressure to quickly derive value from this data. Performance, scalability, and efficiency are essential for AI technology stacks as storage demands rise. Certified to be compatible with the GB200 NVL72 system, Western Digital's enterprise SSD addresses the growing needs of the AI market for high-speed accelerated computing combined with low latency to serve compute-intensive AI environments.The NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 system helps meet the diverse accelerated computing needs of the world's data centers and provides manufacturers with a reference architecture to quickly and cost-effectively build more than 100 system design configurations while maintaining consistency in design and performance.

"Storage has become an increasingly significant and dynamic component of the AI technology stack," said Rob Soderbery, EVP and GM, Flash Business, Western Digital. "With Western Digital's DC SN861 E.1S enterprise SSD certified to support NVIDIA GB200 NVL72, customers can take the guesswork out of the design process and achieve faster time to market for a wide range of accelerated computing applications."

"Data storage systems need enough capacity and performance to support the computational loads and speeds required for large, sophisticated AI models," said Mark Taylor, Sr. Data Center Product Manager at NVIDIA. "Tested and verified to support the NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 system, Western Digital's four- and eight-terabyte DC SN861 SSDs offer customers a high-performance, enterprise-class storage solution for accelerated computing applications."

In June, Western Digital introduced a six-stage AI Data Cycle framework that defines the optimal storage mix for AI workloads at scale. This framework helps customers plan and develop advanced storage infrastructures to maximize their AI investments, improve efficiency, and reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their AI workflows. Western Digital offers a comprehensive storage technology portfolio tailored to support every stage of the AI Data Cycle.

The DC SN861 SSD is designed to support the AI model training, interface & prompting and AI inference engine stages of the AI data cycle. Western Digital's first enterprise-class PCIe Gen 5.0 solution offers industry-leading random read performance and power efficiency for AI workloads. With capacities up to 16 TB, it delivers up to a 3x random read performance increase over the previous generation with ultra-low latency and incredible responsiveness for LLM training, inferencing and AI service deployment. In addition, the low power profile delivers higher IOPS/Watt, reducing overall TCO. The increased PCIe Gen 5 bandwidth helps address the growing needs of the AI market for high-speed accelerated computing combined with low latency to serve compute-intensive AI environments. Built for mission-critical workloads, the DC SN861 provides a rich feature set, including NVMe 2.0 and OCP 2.0 support, 1 and 3 DWPD, and a 5-year limited warranty.