SK hynix Develops PS1012 U.2 High Capacity SSD for AI Data Centers

[btarunr]

SK hynix Inc. announced today that it has completed development of its high-capacity SSD product, PS1012 U.2, designed for AI data centers. As the era of AI accelerates, the demand for high-performance enterprise SSDs (eSSD) is rapidly increasing, and QLC technology, which enables high capacity, has become the industry standard. In line with this trend, SK hynix has developed a 61 TB product using this technology and introduced it to the market.

SK hynix has been leading the SSD market for AI data centers with Solidigm, a subsidiary which commercialized QLC-based eSSD for the first time in the world. With the development of PS1012, the company expects to build a balanced SSD portfolio, thereby maximizing synergy between the two companies. With the latest 5th generation (Gen 5) PCIe, PS1012 doubles its bandwidth compared to 4th generation based products. As a result, the data transfer speed reaches 32 GT/s (Gig-transfers per second), with the sequential read performance of 13 GB/s (Gigabyte per second), which is twice that of previous generation products.



SK hynix plans to supply the sample of the new product to global server manufacturers within this year for product evaluation, and based on this, it plans to expand its product line to 122 TB in the third quarter of next year. The company also aims to lead the SSD market for ultra-high capacity data centers by developing 244 TB products based on the world's highest 321-high 4D NAND developed in November, to overcome the capacity limitations of eSSD.

"SK hynix and Solidigm are strengthening our QLC-based high-capacity SSD lineup to solidify our technological leadership in NAND solutions for AI," said Ahn Hyun, President and Chief Development Officer of SK hynix. "In the future, we will lay the foundation for growth to become a Full Stack AI memory provider by meeting the diverse needs of AI data center customers based on our high competitiveness in the eSSD field."

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[Vincero]

Interesting that the outside is (slightly) finned hinting at improving heat dissipation....

Shame there isn't a teardown pic showing how good the heat-sinking / conduction from the controller / NAND dies is - i.e. is it just for show or actually meant to have some effect.

 

[SiggiTheHun]

Typo, instead of "U.3" or is "U.2" actually only used as a description of the form factor - NOT the interface?
Same confusion for Micron´s 6550 ION.

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[Vincero]

Typo, instead of "U.3" or is "U.2" actually only used as a description of the form factor - NOT the interface?
Same confusion for Micron´s 6550 ION.

I always thought U.2 refers to the SFF connector type - SFF-8639
How you get that connector though is variable - you can get PCIe to multiple U.2 / SFF adapters, M.2>U.2 cards, etc., etc.,

More interestingly, I saw some people are selling connectors that take the U.2 PCIe lanes from a drive cable connection and provide a PCIe x4 slot instead... similar I guess to using the M.2 slot and doing the same - just with a bit more cable routing overhead / capability.

I guess it's a neat way to distribute PCIe lanes that would either have gone unused or need to be accessible for removable devices elsewhere/outside of the chassis, etc.

 

[Patriot]

Typo, instead of "U.3" or is "U.2" actually only used as a description of the form factor - NOT the interface?
Same confusion for Micron´s 6550 ION.

Eh, u.2 and u.3 describe the interface. 2.5" or SFF drive would just describe form factor.

U.2 and U.3 use the same connector, different wiring/signal schema.
U.3 is designed for tri-mode controllers, it puts the nvme signals on different pins than SAS and SATA.
U.3 drives work in U.2 hosts, U.2 drives do not work in U.3 hosts.

As this is a Gen5 drive it makes the most sense to me to be U.3 as it would be backwards compatible to older hosts, I see no advantage to it being a U.2 drive.
That said kind of surprised we are not seeing more EDSFF drives.

The micron 6550 ion appears to be a u.2 drive for the legacy form factors and edsff for the newer servers.
Maybe U.3 failed to take off...

 

[Vincero]

As this is a Gen5 drive it makes the most sense to me to be U.3 as it would be backwards compatible to older hosts, I see no advantage to it being a U.2 drive.
That said kind of surprised we are not seeing more EDSFF drives.

The micron 6550 ion appears to be a u.2 drive for the legacy form factors and edsff for the newer servers.
Maybe U.3 failed to take off...

I guess it can join SATA-Express in tech purgatory...