Solidigm is Working on 192-layer 3D QLC With Improved Endurance, 61.44 TB SSD

[TheLostSwede]

Solidigm—the company that Intel sold its SSD business to—held a tech day last week where the company shared some details about its future roadmaps. The company appears to be focusing on 3D QLC NAND and its 192-layer product promises both larger drives, but also enhanced endurance for QLC NAND. For example, Solidigm's 30.72 TB SSD is promising a PBW of around 32 PB (Petabyte) endurance. This is using what the company calls QLC Essential Endurance NAND.

However, its QLC Value Endurance NAND is what will enable the 61.44 TB drive, which is said to offer around 65 PB write endurance, but it should be noted that this is at 16 KB aligned data or during other types of light data writes. Neither type of NAND is destined for consumer applications as of now, as Solidigm is only targeting E1, E3 and U.2 form factors. Regardless, this appears to be a huge step forward for 3D QLC NAND and Solidigm is hoping that its upcoming drives will be able to replace mechanical drives in the enterprise market space. On top of this, Solidigm also claims to offer better throughput and latency compared to its competitors, but we're still looking at SATA type level SSD performance for the IOPS. The first drives with the new 192-layer 3D QLC NAND are expected to be available sometime early next year.



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[Wirko]

Typo in first word of headline. And crazy company names.

 

[maxfly]

Wow, 61tb ssd...insane.

 

[evernessince]

Hopefully they will be faster but comparing your upcoming 7.68TB product to a 15TB product is just misleading. Typically there's a performance hit for larger drives. Erodes the confidence of the performance claims they are making.

In any case, performance won't be out of the world for these products so ultimately the deciding factor will be price and power consumption. Some of these larger SSDs tend to consume a good chunk of power reaching over 20w in a large E1.L form factor. At that point you are very much competing with HDDs as you loose the advantage of space and power savings that SSD's typically bring.

Hopefully some of the larger sizes will also trickle down to the consumer space. As of current there are not a lot of high capacity options in that space. 8TB options should become vastly more common.

 

[maxfly]

Hopefully they will be faster but comparing your upcoming 7.68TB product to a 15TB product is just misleading. Typically there's a performance hit for larger drives. Erodes the confidence of the performance claims they are making.

In any case, performance won't be out of the world for these products so ultimately the deciding factor will be price and power consumption. Some of these larger SSDs tend to consume a good chunk of power reaching over 20w in a large E1.L form factor. At that point you are very much competing with HDDs as you loose the advantage of space and power savings that SSD's typically bring.

Hopefully some of the larger sizes will also trickle down to the consumer space. As of current there are not a lot of high capacity options in that space. 8TB options should become vastly more common.

Eh, high power consumption wasn't something I was aware of
I agree, affordable 8tb and larger SSDs would be nice to see a bit more frequently on the consumer side.

 

[evernessince]

Eh, high power consumption wasn't something I was aware of
I agree, affordable 8tb and larger SSDs would be nice to see a bit more frequently on the consumer side.

It's nothing you as a consumer need to worry about. The form factors that will be accessible to you like SATA, M.2, and U.2/U.3 will all be within the 2w - 12w range. The higher wattages are really only for larger form factors which will be needed for the higher stated capacities.

 

[Prima.Vera]

we're still looking at SATA type level SSD performance.

So those are for backup and storage only, not very interesting for the average Joe...

 

[Blue4130]

So those are for backup and storage only, not very interesting for the average Joe...

These are also used in arrays of a dozen or more (24?) drives. Thst vastly increases throughput.

 

[Scrizz]

These are very much Data Center focused.

 

[maxfly]

It's nothing you as a consumer need to worry about. The form factors that will be accessible to you like SATA, M.2, and U.2/U.3 will all be within the 2w - 12w range. The higher wattages are really only for larger form factors which will be needed for the higher stated capacities.

No, not concerned for myself lol. It's interesting to know that they are up against the hdd power usage wall.

 

[lexluthermiester]

which is said to offer around 65 PB write endurance

Ok, that's kinda impressive. But can they prove it?

 

[thewan]

SATA type level SSD performance

Lost again I see. That "sata" performance is faster than the majority of consumer NVME TLC drives out there. Only the new Samsung 990 PRO barely beats it.

 

[Mussels]

PBW is definitely in the server grade of endurance, and outside regular consumer scopes

Ok, that's kinda impressive. But can they prove it?

If it's effectively based on "10x the number of chips = 10x the endurance" i guess they can

At this size, it's gunna need a lot more flash modules than a regular SSD

 

[lexluthermiester]

If it's effectively based on "10x the number of chips = 10x the endurance" i guess they can

At this size, it's gunna need a lot more flash modules than a regular SSD

And those are good points, but I'm talking about a Cell-by-Cell basis. Is it really, actually more durable, or is it just more scheming and trickery?

 

[Jokii]

So those are for backup and storage only, not very interesting for the average Joe...

Maybe I'm no average Joe, but I'd love to replace my HDDs with SSDs for storage. I don't mind if they can only do SATA speeds.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Lost again I see. That "sata" performance is faster than the majority of consumer NVME TLC drives out there. Only the new Samsung 990 PRO barely beats it.

113,000 IOPS is not better than SATA performance.
Yes, the 4K writes are very good, but the comparison was throughput, but I guess you only read half the sentence.
Also, I was comparing to general SATA SSDs, not QLC SATA SSDs.

 

[Wirko]

Maybe I'm no average Joe, but I'd love to replace my HDDs with SSDs for storage. I don't mind if they can only do SATA speeds.

There are SATA speds. Then there are QVO speeds.

Sorry if a part of the graph was left out, it's just too tall.

 

[evernessince]

And those are good points, but I'm talking about a Cell-by-Cell basis. Is it really, actually more durable, or is it just more scheming and trickery?

The TBW number seems to suggest they fixed the endurance issue. Typically QLC drives only get 180 TBW to 360 TBW per TB of storage space. The 2nd image has them getting a bit over 1 PBW per TB with 4th gen QLC, which is on par with mid-range consumer TLC drives.

 

[LabRat 891]

Solidgm is SK Hynix's brand for post-Intel acquisition products. Very good brand lineage, IMO.

About to move to a 2TB P41 plus. Reviews made it appear extremely impressive (for a QLC-based DRAM-less drive.) I'd love to see dozens of TB SSDs approaching Spinning Rust pricing.
TBQH, with QLC (and 5-layer NAND coming), cost is the only factor at this point keeping NVME drives from surpassing (con/prosumer) HDDs' capacities.

 

[lexluthermiester]

The TBW number seems to suggest they fixed the endurance issue.

Not necessarily. They're padding data writes with the massive amount extra NAND available. However that does not define whether or not actual improvement has been made. They need to show testing that indicates durability.