North American customers are increasing their orders for storage products as energy efficiency becomes a key priority for AI inference servers. This, in turn, is driving up demand for QLC enterprise SSDs. Currently, only Solidigm and Samsung have certified QLC products, with Solidigm actively promoting its QLC products and standing to benefit the most from this surge in demand. TrendForce predicts shipments of QLC enterprise SSD bits to reach 30 exabytes in 2024—increasing fourfold in volume from 2023.

TrendForce identifies two main reasons for the increasing use of QLC SSDs in AI applications: the products' fast read speeds and TCO advantages. AI inference servers primarily perform read operations, which occur less frequently than the data writing required by AI training servers. In comparison to HDDs, QLC enterprise SSDs offer superior read speeds and have capacities that have expanded up to 64 TB.

Solidigm today announced the D7-5810, an enterprise SSD for extremely intensity write workloads. Such a drive would be capable of write endurance in the neighborhood of 50 DWPD. For reference, the company's D7-P5620, a write-centric/mixed workload drive for data-logging, and AI ingest/preparation, offers around 3 DWPD of endurance, depending on the variant; and the read-intensive drive meant for CDNs, the D5-P5336, offers around 0.5 DWPD. Use cases for the new D7-P5810 include high performance caching for flash arrays dealing with "cooler" data; high-frequency trading, and HPC.

Solidigm D7-P5810 uses SK hynix 144-layer 3D NAND flash that's made to operate in a pure SLC configuration. The drive comes in 800 GB and 1.6 TB capacities, and offers 50 DWPD over an endurance period of 5 years (4K random writes). More specifically, both models offer 73 PBW (petabytes written) of endurance. The drive comes in enterprise-relevant 15 mm-thick U.2 form-factor, with PCIe Gen 4 x4 interface, with NVMe 1.3c and NVMe MI 1.1 protocols.

Solidigm has announced the Solidigm P41 Plus, the company's first branded solid-state storage drive (SSD) since becoming a company in December 2021. The P41 Plus is an innovative PCIe 4.0 product that delivers the industry's best combination of performance and value to PC users for everyday productivity and gaming. Capable of delivering up to 4,125 MB/s sequential read speed, the Solidigm P41 Plus represents a breakthrough in cost efficiency, delivering great PCIe 4.0 performance at a price that won't break the budget for everyday PC users. The Solidigm P41 Plus features 144-layer 3D NAND and is widely available in an M.2 2280 form factor in capacities of 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB. For increased design flexibility, the Solidigm P41 Plus is also available to OEMs in 2230 and 2242 sizes.

In a move that reinforces Solidigm's commitment to being a new paradigm in solid-state storage, the company has invested significantly in storage software to unlock the best possible user experience. The result is Solidigm Synergy software, an optional but highly recommended suite that includes both a storage driver and a Windows application with robust drive health monitoring tools. The Solidigm Storage Driver supports host-managed caching by monitoring usage patterns to identify high-priority data, keeping the most important items in the cache, and enabling faster reads as the drive fills up.

Intel today rolled out the SSD 670p series, a new line of M.2 NVMe SSDs that are targeted at the mainstream segment. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 host-interface, the drive implements Intel's latest 144-layer 3D QLC NAND flash memory, mated with a re-badged Silicon Motion SM2265G 8-channel controller that uses a fixed 256 MB DDR3L DRAM cache across all capacity variants. It comes in capacities of 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB.

The 1 TB and 2 TB variants offer sequential read speeds of up to 3500 MB/s, while the 512 GB variant reads at up to 3000 MB/s. Sequential write speeds vary, with the 512 GB variant writing at up to 1600 MB/s, the 1 TB variant at up to 2500 MB/s, and the 2 TB variant at up to 2700 MB/s. The drives offer significantly higher endurance than past generations of QLC-based drives, with the 512 GB variant capable of up to 185 TBW, the 1 TB variant up to 370 TBW, and the 2 TB variant up to 740 TBW. Intel is backing the drives with 5-year warranties. The 512 GB variant is priced at $89, the 1 TB variant at $154, and the 2 TB variant at $329.

Today, at Intel's Memory and Storage 2020 event, the company highlighted six new memory and storage products to help customers meet the challenges of digital transformation. Key to advancing innovation across memory and storage, Intel announced two new additions to its Intel Optane Solid State Drive (SSD) Series: the Intel Optane SSD P5800X, the world's fastest data center SSD, and the Intel Optane Memory H20 for client, which features performance and mainstream productivity for gaming and content creation. Optane helps meet the needs of modern computing by bringing the memory closer to the CPU. The company also revealed its intent to deliver its 3rd generation of Intel Optane persistent memory (code-named "Crow Pass") for cloud and enterprise customers.

"Today is a key moment for our memory and storage journey. With the release of these new Optane products, we continue our innovation, strengthen our memory and storage portfolio, and enable our customers to better navigate the complexity of digital transformation. Optane products and technologies are becoming a mainstream element of business compute. And as a part of Intel, these leadership products are advancing our long-term growth priorities, including AI, 5G networking and the intelligent, autonomous edge." -Alper Ilkbahar, Intel vice president in the Data Platforms Group and general manager of the Intel Optane Group.

Intel's memory and storage products division now has a completely independent NAND flash technology development team post its split with Micron Technology, with which it was part of the IMFlash Technologies joint-venture. Intel is close to gaining a technological lead over Micron with a new 144-layer 3D NAND flash chip which will ship roughly around the time Micron begins pushing out its 128-layer 3D NAND chips. SK Hynix will begin shipping its 128-layer 3D NAND flash chips later this year. KIOXIA will put out 112-layer chips before the turn of the year. YMTC is developing its portfolio at a breakneck pace.

The 144-layer 3D NAND flash chip by Intel can handle up to four bits per cell (QLC), and can be configured to function as TLC or SLC, at lower densities. Intel will launch its first SSD based on this 144-layer QLC NAND flash chip, codenamed "Keystone Harbor," later this year. Development is underway at Intel for PLC (5 bits per cell) technology, which should drive up densities by 25 percent. Intel is also close to launching its second generation 3D X-point memory technology.

Intel today at a press event in South Korea announced their plans for future product launches in the memory spaces. Optane is the name of the carriage Intel is pulling here - there's no novelty about that - and the company will be pushing a second generation release of Optane enterprise SSDs and Optane DC Persistent Memory modules. Most interesting for us down-to-earth PC enthusiasts, though - the market launch of 144 Layer QLC NAND in 2020, which should bring even lower pricing to NAND-based devices. Later, the company also plans to launch 144 layer TLC NAND solutions.

The new Optane modules apparently make use of first-generation 3D XPoint memory still - the love child of the now defunct Intel-Micron partnership. Intel's new Optane DC Persistent Memory products will materialize in codename Barlow Pass modules, with a release window around the likes of Cooper Lake (14nm) and Ice Lake (10nm) server processors scheduled for 2020. It seems that Intel's only consumer solution based in Optane - the Optane Memory H10 two-in-one SSD - is a lonely child effort which won't be joined by the previously-planned Optane Memory M15 (a dedicated cache drive for systems with mechanical-based storage, which are already on their way out) and Optane SSD 815P (which would only offer 118 GB of storage, clearly too little for current data storing trends in the overall market.