1 petabyte SSD is coming true

According to TomsHardware , at the Investor Day event (USA) last week, Sandisk introduced the UltraQLC platform, a technology that plays an important role in the development of SSDs with capacities up to 1 petabyte (PB). UltraQLC is not a standalone memory type but a combination of BICS 8 QLC 3D NAND, a controller with 64 NAND channels and optimized software.

The controller plays a key role in this platform, integrating specialized hardware accelerators to reduce latency, increase bandwidth, and improve reliability. In addition, it can adjust power consumption according to processing needs, optimizing energy efficiency.

UltraQLC combines BICS 8 QLC 3D NAND, a 64-channel controller, and optimized software, allowing SSD capacities to increase up to 1 petabyte without sacrificing performance.

According to Sandisk, the initial UltraQLC SSDs will use 2 terabit (Tb) NAND chips, allowing for drives with 128 terabyte (TB) capacities. In the future, with the advent of larger capacity NAND chips, the company aims to develop 256 TB, 512 TB, and eventually 1 PB SSDs. However, increasing capacity comes with the risk of performance degradation, something Sandisk needs to address to ensure system stability.

In addition to UltraQLC, Sandisk also mentioned another important technology: 3D DRAM. As memory demands continue to increase due to the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLM), the company believes that the traditional method of scaling DRAM is gradually failing to meet the requirements. However, despite long-term research, Sandisk admits that there is still no clear roadmap for 3D DRAM due to the immense technological challenges.

Instead of focusing on 3D DRAM, Sandisk is looking for alternatives such as high-performance flash memory (HBF), which increases memory scalability without relying on traditional methods. Meanwhile, some other approaches such as investing heavily in DRAM production or developing DRAM in the 3D direction are still being considered but are not feasible at the present time.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/ssd-1-petabyte-sap-thanh-hien-thuc-18525021810392021.htm