Western Digital Teases 128 TB Enterprise SSD: BiCS8 3D QLC for AI Workloads

A week after Western Digital confirmed that it had begun sampling of its 64 TB SSDs for datacenters, the company has teased its next-generation product, a 128 TB solid-state drive at FMS 2024.

For now, all we know about Western Digital's 128 TB SSD is that it uses the company's BiCS8 QLC NAND memory and is designed primarily for 'fast AI data lakes and capacity-intensive performance applications,' as Western Digital does not seem to be disclosing too much information about its upcoming product. The sample on the show floor indicates the usage of a U.2/U.3 form-factor suitable for GPU servers.

BiCS8 NAND has 218 layers and uses a hybrid bonding scheme that is being tagged as CMOS directly bonded to Array (CBA). It must be noted that this technique is an evolutionary successor to Micron's CMOS-under-Array (CuA) and SK hynix's Periphery-under-Cell (4D PUC) technologies. BiCS8 NAND can interface to the controller at rates of up to 3600 MT/s, making it suitable for Gen 4+ drives.

The technology demonstration on the show floor had the drive's firmware optimized for AI checkpointing - a workload that involves sequential writes, but also requires the drive to support a minimum QoS for simultaneous read operations.

Western Digital is not the only company to talk about high-performance 128 TB SSDs. Samsung recently said that it has technology to build 120 TB-class drives, and Solidigm was also demonstrating a proof-of-concept 122 TB QLC SSD at FMS 2024. AI workloads have triggered an insatiable need for dense and power-efficient storage in the data center. This has served as an impetus for enterprise SSD vendors to continue pushing the envelop on the per-drive capacity front.

Micron Ships Denser & Faster 276 Layer TLC NAND, Arriving First In Micron 2650 Client SSDs

Micron on Tuesday announced that the company has begun shipping its 9th Generation (G9) 276 layer TLC NAND. The next generation of NAND from the prolific memory maker, Micron's latest NAND is designed to further push the envelope on TLC NAND performance, offering significant density and performance improvements over its existing NAND technology.

Micron's G9 TLC NAND memory features 276 active layers, which is up from 232-layers in case of Micron's previous generation TLC NAND. At this point the company is being light on technical details in their official material. However in a brief interview with Blocks & Files, the company confirmed that their 276L NAND still uses a six plane architecture, which was first introduced with the 232L generation. At this point we're assuming Micron is also string-stacking two decks of NAND together, as they have been for the past couple of generations, which means we're looking at 138 layer decks.

On the density front, Micron told Blocks & Files that they have improved their NAND density by 44% over their 232L generation. Which, given what we know about that generation, would put the density at around 21 Gbit/mm². Or for a 1Tbit die of TLC NAND, that works out to a die size of roughly 48.9mm², comparable to the die size of a 512Gbit TLC die from Micron's older 176L NAND.

Besides improving density, the other big push with Micron's newest generation of NAND was further improving its throughput. While the company's 232L NAND was built against the ONFi 5.0 specification, which topped out at transfer rates of 2400 MT/sec, their new 276L NAND can hit 3600 MT/sec, which is consistent with the ONFi 5.1 spec.

Meanwhile, the eagle-eyed will likely also pick up on Micron's ninth-generation/G9 branding, which is new to the company. Micron's has not previously used this kind of generational branding for their NAND, which up until now has simply been identified by its layer count (and before the 3D era, its feature size). Internally, this is believed to be Micron's 7th generation 3D NAND architecture. However, taking a page from the logic fab industry, Micron seems to be branding it as ninth-generation in order to keep generational parity with its competitors, who are preparing their own 8th/9th generation NAND (and thus cliam that they are the first NAND maker to ship 9th gen NAND).

And while this NAND will eventually end up in all sorts of devices – including, no doubt, high-end PCIe Gen5 drives thanks to its high transfer rates – Micron's launch vehicle for the NAND is their own Micron 2650 client SSD. The 2650 is a relatively straightforward PCIe Gen4 x4 SSD, using an unnamed, DRAMless controller alongside Micron's new NAND. The company is offering it in 3 form factors – M.2 2280, 2242, and 2230 – with a modest set of capacities ranging from 256GB to 1TB.

Micron's 2650 NVMe SSDs offer sequential read performance of up to 7000 MB/s as well as sequential write performance of up to 6000 MB/s. As for random performance, we are talking about up to a million read and write IOPS, depending on the configuration.

The performance of the drives scales pretty significantly with capacity, underscoring how much parallelism is needed to keep up with the PCIe Gen4 controller. The rated capacity of the drives scales similarly, with the smallest drive rated for 200TBW (800 drive writes), while the largest drive is rated for 600 TBW (600 drive writes).

“The shipment of Micron G9 NAND is a testament to Micron’s prowess in process technology and design innovations,” said Scott DeBoer, executive vice president of Technology and Products at Micron. “Micron G9 NAND is up to 73% denser than competitive technologies in the market today, allowing for more compact and efficient storage solutions that benefit both consumers and businesses.”

Micron's G9 276-layer TLC NAND memory is also in qualification with customers in component form, so expect the company's partners to adopt it for their high-end SSDs in the coming quarters. In addition, Micron plans Crucial-branded SSDs based on its G9 NAND memory..

SK hynix to Enter 60 TB SSD Club Next Quarter

SK hynix this week reported its financial results for the second quarter, as well as offering a glimpse at its plans for the coming quarters. Notably among the company's plans for the year is the release of a SK hynix-branded 60 TB SSD, which will mark the firm's entry into the ultra-premium enterprise SSD league.

"SK hynix plans to expand sales of high-capacity eSSD and lead the market in the second half with 60TB products, expecting eSSD sales to be more than quadrupled compared to last year," a statement by SK hynix reads.

Currently there are only two standard form-factor 61.44 TB SSDs on the market: the Solidigm D5-P5336 (U.2/15mm and E1.L), and the Samsung BM1743 (U.2/15mm and E3.S). Both are built from a proprietary controller (Solidigm's controller still carries an Intel logotype) with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and use QLC NAND for storage.

SK hynix's brief mention of the drive means that tere aren't any formal specifications or capabilities to discuss just yet. But it is reasonable to assume that the company will use its own QLC memory for their ultra-high-capacity drives. What's more intriguing are which controller the company plans to use and how it is going to position its 60 TB-class SSD.

Internally, SK hynix has access to multiple controller teams, both of which have the expertise to develop an enterprise-grade controller suitable for a 60 TB drive. SK hynix technically owns Solidigm, the former Intel SSD and NAND unit, giving SK hynix the option of using Solidigm's controller, or even reselling a rebadged D5-P5336 outright. Alternatively, SK hynix has their own (original) internal SSD team, who is responsible for building their well-received Aries SSD controller, among other works.

Ultra-high-capacity SSDs for performance demanding read-intensive storage applications, such as AI inference on the edge or content delivery networks, is a promising premium market. So SK hynix is finding itself highly incentivized to enter it with a compelling offering. 

Micron Launches 9550 PCIe Gen5 SSDs: 14 GB/s with Massive Endurance

Micron has introduced its Micron 9550-series SSDs, which it claims are the fastest enterprise drives in the industry. The Micron 9550 Pro and 9550 Max SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface promise unbeatable performance amid enhanced endurance and power efficiency, which will be particularly beneficial for data centersMicron's 9550-series solid-state drives are based on a proprietary NVMe 2.0b controller with a PCIe Gen5 x4 interface and 232-layer 3D TLC NAND memory. The drives will be available in capacities ranging from 3.2 TB to 30.72 TB with one or three drive writes per day endurance as well as U.2, E1.S, and E3.S form factors to cater to the requirements of different types of servers.

As far as performance is concerned, the Micron 9550 NVMe SSD boasts impressive metrics, including up to sustainable 14.0 GB/s sequential read speeds and 10.0 GB/s sequential write speeds, which is higher compared to the peak performance offered by Samsung's PM1743 SSDs. For random operations, it achieves 3,300 million IOPS in random reads and 0.9 million IOPS in random writes, again surpassing competitor offerings.

Micron says that power efficiency is another standout feature of its Micron 9550 SSD: It consumes up to 81% less SSD energy per terabyte transferred with NVIDIA Magnum IO GPUDirect Storage and up to 35% lower SSD power usage in MLPerf benchmarks compared to rivals. Considering that we are dealing with a claim by the manufacturer itself, the numbers should be taken with caution.

"The Micron 9550 SSD represents a giant leap forward for data center storage, delivering a staggering 3.3 million IOPS while consuming up to 43% less power than comparable SSDs in AI workloads such as GNN and LLM training", said Alvaro Toledo, vice president and general manager of Micron's’s Data Center Storage group. "This unparalleled performance, combined with exceptional power efficiency, establishes a new benchmark for AI storage solutions and demonstrates Micron’s unwavering commitment to spearheading the AI revolution."

Micron traditionally offers its high-end data center SSDs in different flavors: the Micron 9550 Pro drives for read-intensive applications are set to be available in 3.84 TB, 7.68 TB, 15.36 TB, and 30.72 TB capacities with one drive writes per day (DWPD) endurance rating, whereas the Micron 9550 Max for mixed-use are set to be available in 3.2 TB, 6.4 TB, 12.8 TB, and 25.6 TB capacities with three DWPD endurance rating. All drives comply with the OCP 2.0 r21 standards and OCP 2.5 telemetry. They also feature SPDM 1.2 and FIPS 140-3 security, secure execution environment, and self-encrypting drive options.

Micron has not touched upon the pricing of the new drives as it depends on volumes and other factors.

HighPoint Updates NVMe RAID Cards for PCIe 5.0: 50 GBps+ Direct-Attached SSD Storage

HighPoint Technologies has updated their NVMe switch and RAID solutions with PCIe 5.0, and supporting up to eight NVMe drives. The new HighPoint Rocket 1600 (switch add-in card) and 7600 series (RAID adapters) are the successors to the SSD SSD7500 series adapter cards introduced in 2020. Similar to its predecessors, the new Rocket series cards are also based on a Broadcom PCIe switch (PEX 89048). The Rocket 7600 series runs the RAID stack on the integrated ARM processor (dual-core Cortex A15)

The PEX 89048 supports up to 48 PCIe 5.0 lanes, out of which 16 are dedicated to the host connection in the Rocket adapters. The use of a true PCIe switch means that the product doesn't rely on PCIe lane bifurcation support in the host platform.

HighPoint's Gen 5 stack currently has two products each in the switch and RAID lineups - an add-in card with support for M.2 drives, and a RAID adapter with four 5.0 x8 SFF-TA-1016 (Mini Cool Edge IO or MCIO) connectors for use with backplanes / setups involving U.2 / U.3 / EDSFF drives.

The RAID adapters require HighPoint's drivers (available for Linux, macOS, and Windows), and supports RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10 arrays. On the other hand, the AIC requires no custom drivers. RAID configurations with the AIC will need to be handled by software running on the host OS. On the hardware side, all members of the Rocket series come with an external power connector (as the solution can consume upwards of 75W) and integrate a heatsink. The M.2 version is actively cooled, as the drives are housed within the full-height / full-length cards.

The solution can theoretically support up to 64 GBps of throughput, but real-world performance is limited to around 56 GBps using Gen 5 drives. It must be noted that even Gen 4 drives can take advantage of the new platform and deliver better performance with the new Rocket series compared to the older SSD7500 series.

The cards are shipping now, with pricing ranging from $1500 (add-in card) to $2000 (RAID adapters). HighPoint is not alone in targeting this HEDT / workstation market. Sabrent has been teasing their Apex Gen 5.0 x16 solution involving eight M.2 SSDs for a few months now (involving a Microchip PCIe switch. Until that solution comes to the market, HighPoint appears to be the only game in town for workstation users requiring access to direct-attached storage capable of delivering 50 GBps+ speeds.

Samsung Joins The 60 TB SSD Club, Looking Forward To 120 TB Drives

Multiple companies offer high-capacity SSDs, but until recently, only one company offered high-performance 60 TB-class drives with a PCIe interface: Solidigm. As our colleagues from Blocks & Files discovered, Samsung quietly rolled out its BM1743 61.44 TB solid-state drive in mid-June and now envisions 120 TB-class SSDs based on the same platform.

Samsung's BM1743 61.44 TB features a proprietary controller and relies on Samsung's 7^th Generation V-NAND (3D NAND) QLC memory. Moreover, Samsung believes that its 7^th Gen V-NAND 'has the potential to accommodate up to 122.88 TB,' 

Samsung plans to offer the BM1743 in two form factors: U.2 for PCIe 4.0 x4 to address traditional servers and E3.S for PCIe 5.0 x4 interfaces to address machines designed to offer maximum storage density. BM1743 can address various applications, including AI training and inference, content delivery networks, and read-intensive workloads. To that end, its write endurance is 0.26 drive writes per day (DWPD) over five years.

Regarding performance, Samsung's BM1743 is hardly a champion compared to high-end drives for gaming machines and workstations. The drive can sustainably achieve sequential read speeds of 7,200 MB/s and write speeds of 2,000 MB/s. It can handle up to 1.6 million 4K random reads and 110,000 4K random writes for random operations.

Power consumption details for the BM1743 have not been disclosed, though it is expected to be high. Meanwhile, the drive's key selling point is its massive storage density, which likely outweighs concerns over its absolute power efficiency for intended applications, as a 60 TB SSD still consumes less than multiple storage devices offering similar capacity and performance.

As noted above, Samsung's BM1743 61.44 TB faces limited competition in the market, so its price will be quite high. For example, Solidigm's D5-P5336 61.44 TB SSD costs $6,905. Other companies, such as Kioxia, Micron, and SK Hynix, have not yet introduced their 60TB-class SSDs, which gives Samsung and Solidigm an edge for now.

UPDATE 7/25: We removed mention of Western Digital's 60 TB-class SSDs, as the company does not currently list any such drives on their website

Kioxia's High-Performance 3D QLC NAND Enables High-End High-Capacity SSDs

This week, Kioxia introduced its new 3D QLC NAND devices aimed at high-performance, high-capacity drives that could redefine what we typically expect from QLC-based SSDs. The components are 1 Tb and 2 Tb 3D QLC NAND ICs with a 3600 MT/s interface speed that could enable M.2-2230 SSDs with a 4 TB capacity and decent performance.

Kioxia's 1 Tb (128 MB) and 2 Tb (256 TB) 3D QLC NAND devices are made on the company's BICS 8 process technology and feature 238 active layers as well as CMOS directly Bonded to Array (CBA) design, which implies that CMOS (including interface and buffers circuitry) is built on a specialized node and bonded to the memory array. Such a manufacturing process enabled Kioxia (and its manufacturing partner Western Digital) to achieve a particularly high interface speed of 3600 MT/s.

In addition to being one of the industry's first 2 Tb QLC NAND devices, the component features a 70% higher write power efficiency compared to Kioxia's BICS 5 3D QLC NAND devices, which is a bit vague statement as the new ICs have higher capacity and performance in general. This feature will be valuable for data centre applications, though I do not expect someone to use 3D QLC memory for write-intensive applications in general. Yet, these devices will be just what the doctor ordered for AI: read-intensive, content distribution, and backup storage.

It is interesting to note that Kioxia's 1 Tb 3D QLC NAND, optimized for performance, has a 30% faster sequential write performance and a 15% lower read latency than the 2 Tb 3D QLC component. These qualities (alongside a 3600 MT/s interface) promise to make Kioxia's 1 Tb 3D QLC competitive even for higher-end PCIe Gen5 x4 SSDs, which currently exclusively use 3D TLC memory.

The remarkable storage density of Kioxia's 2Tb 3D QLC NAND devices will allow customers to create high-capacity SSDs in compact form factors. For instance, a 16-Hi stacked package (measuring 11.5 mm × 13.5 mm × 1.5 mm) can be used to build a 4TB M.2-2230 drive or a 16TB M.2-2280 drive. Even a single 16-Hi package could be enough to build a particularly fast client SSD.

Kioxia is now sampling its 2 Tb 3D QLC NAND BiCS 8 memory with customers, such as Pure Storage.

"We have a long-standing relationship with Kioxia and are delighted to incorporate their eighth-generation BiCS Flash 2Tb QLC flash memory products to enhance the performance and efficiency of our all-flash storage solutions," said Charles Giancarlo, CEO of Pure Storage. "Pure's unified all-flash data storage platform is able to meet the demanding needs of artificial intelligence as well as the aggressive costs of backup storage. Backed by Kioxia technology, Pure Storage will continue to offer unmatched performance, power efficiency, and reliability, delivering exceptional value to our customers."

"We are pleased to be shipping samples of our new 2Tb QLC with the new eighth-generation BiCS flash technology," said Hideshi Miyajima, CTO of Kioxia. "With its industry-leading high bit density, high speed data transfer, and superior power efficiency, the 2Tb QLC product will offer new value for rapidly emerging AI applications and large storage applications demanding power and space savings."

There is no word on when the 1 Tb 3D QLC BiCS 8 memory will be sampled or released to the market.

SK hynix Wraps up Dev Work on High-End PCB01 PCIe 5.0 SSD for OEMs, Launching Later This Year

SK hynix early in Friday announced that the company has finished the development of it's PCB01 PCIe Gen5 SSD, the company's forthcoming high-end SSD for OEMs. Based on the company's new Alistar platform, the PCB01 is designed to deliver chart-topping performance for client machines. And, as a sign of the times, SK hynix is positioning the PCB01 for AI PCs, looking to synergize with the overall industry interest in anything and everything AI.

The bare, OEM-focused drives have previously been shown off by SK hynix, and make no attempt to hide what's under the hood. The PCB01 relies on SK hynix's Alistar controller, which features a PCIe Gen5 x4 host interface on the front end and eight NAND channels on the back end, placing it solidly in the realm of high-end SSDs. Paired with the Alistar controller is the company's latest 238-layer TLC NAND (H25T1TD48C & H25T2TD88C), which offers a maximum transfer speed of 2400 MT/second. Being that this is a high-end client SSD, there's also a DRAM chip on board, though the company isn't disclosing its capacity.

As with other high-end PCIe 5.0 client SSDs, SK hynix is planning on hitting peak read speeds of up to 14GB/second on the drive, while peak sequential write speeds should top 12GB/second (with pSLC caching, of course) – performance figures well within the realm of possibility for an 8 channel drive. As for random performance, at Computex the company was telling attendees that the drives should be able to sustain 4K random read and write rates of 2 million IOPS, which is very high as well. The SSDs are also said to consume up to 30% less power than 'predecessors,' according to SK hynix, though the company didn't elaborate on that figure. Typically in the storage industry, energy figures are based on iso-performance (rather than peak performance) – essentially measuring energy efficiency per bit rather than toal power consumption – and that is likely the case here as well.

At least initially, SK Hynix plans to release its PCB01 in three capacities – 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB. The company has previously disclosed that their 238L TLC NAND has a capacity of 512Gbit, so these are typical capacity figures for single-sided drives. And while the focus of the company's press release this week was on OEM drives, this is the same controller and NAND that is also going into the company's previously-teased retail Platinum P51 SSD, so this week's reveal offers a bit more detail into what to expect from that drive family as well.

Specs aside, Ahn Hyun, the Head of the N-S Committee at SK hynix, said that multiple global CPU providers for on-device AI PCs are seeking collaboration for the compatibility validation process, which is underway, so expect PCB01 drives inside PCs in this back-to-school and holiday seasons.

"We will work towards enhancing our leadership as the global top AI memory provider also in the NAND solution space by successfully completing the customer validation and mass production of PCB01, which will be in the limelight," Ahn Hyun said.

Western Digital Rolls Out Updated Budget WD Blue SN5000 SSDs, Adds 4TB Model

Western Digital expanded its WD Blue NVMe family of budget SSDs this week with the introduction of the the WD Blue SN5000 series, an updated lineup of SSDs that, among other things, adds a 4 TB model. Being budget drives, the SN5000 series is not going to be a performance monster, but their combination of capacity, reliability, and relatively low price could make them popular both among casual buyers and among enthusiasts looking for relatively cheap bulk solid-state storage.

Western Digital's WD Blue SN500 NVMe drives come in an M.2-2280 form-factor and are based around an in-house WD controller (the company rarely discloses their codenames these days). WD's controller is a 4 channel, DRAMless design, which is what we typically see for budget and mainstream SSDs. Externally, the controller supports a PCIe 4.0 x4 connection, and per WD's specifications, even this budget drive should be fast enough to put the additional bandwidth of PCIe 4.0 to good use. All of the drives are single-sided, and are covered with a thin graphene heatspreader for heat dissipation.

More surprising here is WD's choice of NAND. According to the company, they are using a mix of different generations and different types of NAND, depending on the model. The 500GB/1TB/2TB models are using WD/Kioxia's older 112 layer BiCS 5 TLC NAND. Meanwhile the new 4TB capacity is being enabled with the company's newer BiCS 6 NAND – but the QLC variety. All drive capacities are being backed by the same controller, so there is a thread of commonality between them, but at a high level WD seems to be using the higher performance of BiCS 6 to offset the switch from TLC to QLC.

When it comes to performance, the WD Blue SN5000 series drives are rated for read speeds between 5000 MB/sec and 5500 MB/sec depending on the capacity, while write speeds range from 4000 MB/sec to 5000 MB/sec. As for random performance, we are looking at up to 690K 4K IOPS random read speeds as well as up to 900K 4K IOPS random write speeds for the highest capacity model, while the lower-end 500 GB model is rated for 460K/770K 4K random read/write IOPS.

Overall, even with the 4TB model using QLC NAND, WD is touting it at offering better performance than any of the lower capacity models. We're accustomed to seeing QLC drives come in behind TLC drives in this respect, so that newer generation of NAND is doing a lot of heavy lifting to put it ahead of the other models.

This goes for write endurance as well; the 4TB QLC model has the highest endurance rating, at 1200 TB written, followed by 900, 600, and 300 TBW for the lower capacity models respectively. Depending on the specific drive model, this works out to between 300 to 600 drive writes in total, or around 0.164 drive writes per day, which is typical for drives in this class.

Overall, the new drive family supplants WD's previous generation of Blue drives, last year's SN580 series. Comparatively, the SN5000 drives are rated to offer better sequential and random drive performance at every tier. And the the tiny 250GB drive has been dropped entirely, making room for the new high-capacity 4TB model at the high-end while the 500GB drive model is the new entry-level capacity.

While the WD Blue SN5000 NVMe family seems to be well positioned to be a low-cost drives meant to compete aggressively on the pricing, for now WD's launch prices are a bit ambitious. The $70 price tag for the 500 GB version is pretty typical, while the $280 recommended price for a 4TB model puts it in a weird spot between a number of other 4TB drives. The tad slower Crucial P3 Plus 4TB can be found for $217, while WD's own considerably faster WD_Black SN850X 4TB is only $30 more, at $310. Ultimately, given that Western Digital's Blue drives are meant to be inexpensive SSDs, we expect retail drive prices to catch up with market realities shortly.

Silicon Motion Demos Low-Power PCie 5.0 SSD Controller: SM2508

Rounding out our Computex 2024 SSD controller news, let's talk about the final major controller vendor at the show: Silicon Motion. Silicon Motion has been somewhat late to the PCIe Gen5 SSD party, as its rival Phison has been offering their high-end PS5026-E26 controller for almost 18 months now. But as Silicon Motion gets ready to make the transition to PCIe 5.0, the company has a trump card up its sleeve: the SM2508 controller, an energy-efficient high-end SSD controller that is intended for lower-power drives.

A PCIe Gen5 x4 controller, SMI's SM2508 boasts a very low active power consumption of 3.5W. Which, installed in an M.2 SSD, is intended to allow drive manufacturers to built 7 Watt (or lower) SSDs, according to the company. The SM2508 is made on TSMC's N6 process technology, which is a 7nm-class fabrication node with an optical shrink, which will make it one of the (if not the) most advanced controllers on the market once it ships. The relatively sophisticated node allows Silicon Motion to pack more cores and more features into its controller while keeping its power consumption in check – not to mention the chip size.

Under the hood, the front-end of the SM2508 SSD controller is based around four Arm Cortex-R8 cores, which will make it a notably powerful controller (Phison's E26, for reference, is two Arm Cortex R5 cores with an accelerator). This controller is meant to be used with DRAM, as well, and will support both DDR4 and LPDDR4.

The back-end of the chip offers eight NAND channels with 32 CE targets, supporting interface speeds up to 3600 MT/s. Altogether, SMI says that the controller can hit sequential read speeds of up to 14.5GB/sec and write speeds of up to 14 GB/s, while 4K random read and write performance will reach up to 2.5 million IOPS. And SMI's demo drive at Computex did even better than that, achieving a 14.9GB/sec read speed under CrystalDiskMark.

Silicon Motion and its partners are currently finalizing the firmware for the SM2508 and qualifying it with various manufacturers' TLC NAND. The chip also supports QLC NAND, though we'd be surprised to see anyone pair such a powerful controller with slower NAND so soon.

At Computex, Silicon Motion itself demonstrated an SM2508 drive in action at its booth. Various drive manufacturers also had SM2508-based drives on the floor as well, though only as static samples.

Realtek Outlines SSD Controller Roadmap: High-End PCIe 5.0 x4 Platform in the Works

While Realtek is best known in the enthusiast space for for its peripheral controllers such as audio codecs and network controllers, the company also has a small-but-respectable SSD controller business that tends to fly under the radar due to its focus on entry-level and mainstream drives. But Realtek's stature in the SSD space is on the rise, as the company is not only planning new PCIe Gen5 SSD controllers, but also their first high-end, DRAM-equipped SSD controller.

For this year's Computex trade show, Realtek laid out a new SSD controller roadmap that calls for the company to release a trio of new SSD controllers over the next couple of years. First up is a new four-channel entry-level PCIe 4.0 controller, the RTS5776DL, which will be joined a bit later by a PCIe 5.0 variant, the RTS5781DL. But most interesting on Realtek's new roadmap is the final chip being planned: the eight-channel, DRAM-equipped RTS5782, which would be the company's first high-end SSD controller, capable of hitting sequential read rates as high as 14GB/second.

Diving a bit deeper into Realtek's roadmap, the RTS5776DL is traditional DRAM-less PCIe Gen4 x4 controller with four NAND channels, and is aimed at entry-level drives. The controller's NAND support is quite modern, however, supporting the latest ONFI/Toggle standards, which will allow it to hit NAND transfer rates up to 3600 MT/second. Across four channels, that's enough bandwidth to fully saturate a PCIe 4.0 x4 connection with sequential read/writes, while random 4K IOPS can burst as high as 1.2 million. Engineering samples of the controller are set to emerge in Q4 2024, so do not expect actual drives based on this chip to emerge for sale until the second half of next year at the earliest.

Realtek is also preparing the RTS5781DL, which can be thought of as a PCIe 5.0 version of their DRAM-less controller platform. The RTS5781DL features the same four-channel NAND layout and 3600 MT/sec max NAND transfer rates, which with the additional bandwidth afforded by PCIe 5.0, shifts the performance bottleneck back to the NAND. Overall, Realtek expects drives with its first PCIe Gen5 SSD controller to hit sustained transfer rates up to 10GB/second, and up to 1.4 million random read/write IOPS. The company aims to make engineering samples of this controller available in the first quarter of 2025, so actual drives will hit the market in late 2025 at best.

Finally, the pinnacle of Realtek's roadmap will be its RTS5782, which is the company's first high-end SSD controller. Besides including support for on-drive DRAM (DDR4/LPDDR4X) for higher performance, the back-end of the RTS5782 will feature an eight NAND channel design that supports transfer rates up to 3600 MT/second. Drives built with the controller are expected to be able to sustain 14GB/second sequential read rates and 12GB/second sequential writes, while the 4K random IOPS performance jumps to 2.5 million 4K read and write IOPS.

Unfortunately, the RTS5782 is also the farthest out of the three controllers, as it's still in the planning stages at Realtek. Consequently, for the moment the company isn't offering any guidance on when the new controller will be ready. No doubt the company will have more to show off next year for Computex 2025.

Cheaper PCIe 5.0 x4 SSDs Incoming: Silicon Power Demos Phison E31T-Based SSD

Although consumer SSDs based on Phison's PS5026-E26 controller have been on the market for almost a year and a half now, the class-leading drives still carry a distinct price premium, and to some degree that's because it's still one of the only options for a PCIe 5.0 SSD. But it looks like the situation is going to change in the coming quarters, as SSDs based on Phison's PS5031-E31T controller are incoming, with at least one Phison customer demoing an E31T drive on the Computex show floor.

Phison's PS5031-E31T controller uses two Arm Cortex-R5 cores accelerated by the Andes N25 CoXProcessor, just like its bigger brother Phison PS5026-E26. But this is where their major hardware similarities seem to end. The new E31T controller is a DRAM-less controller with four NAND channels (16 CE targets) that is produced on one of TSMC's 7nm processes, whereas the E26 is an eight-channel controller made on TSMC's 12nm production node.

Besides cutting down on memory channels and the use of DRAM to drive down costs, the E31T also picks up a couple of new tricks by virtue of being nearly two years newer. In particular, the E31T sports Phison's 7th Generation LDPC error correction technology, as opposed to the E25's 5th-gen LDPC

Phison itself calls its E31T platform 'the first mainstream 10 GB/s platform,' which pretty much gives a performance indicator for some of the upcoming inexpensive PCIe Gen5 SSDs. As for random performance, we are talking about 1.5M IOPS per second, which is in line with performance offered by some of enterprise-grade PCIe Gen4 SSDs.

Meanwhile, a Silicon Power ad at Computex indicates that that the company at least hopes to get to 12 GB/sec with its "US85" drive. Which at 4 NAND channels would require pairing up the controller with cutting-edge 3200 MT/sec NAND. It's a bit of an odd pairing given the mainstream, cost-conscious status of the E31T controller, but then the savings on the controller supporting DRAM can be invested back into the NAND on the drive itself. And more importantly, with 12 GB/sec reads and writes, Silicon Power's US85 SSD will be able to compete against earlier E26-based drives that are still being sold on the market, which brings this product to a whole new level. Though Silicon Power will have to be able to procure enough fast 3D NAND to meet demand.

Both Phison and Silicon Power expect E31T to start shipping in Q4, so by the start of next year, mainstream SSDs should be receiving a nice speed boost.

Samsung Starts Mass Production of 9th Generation V-NAND: 1Tb 3D TLC NAND

Samsung Electronics has started mass production of its 9th generation of V-NAND memory. The first dies based on their latest NAND tech come in a 1 Tb capacity using a triple-level cell (TLC) architecture, with data transfer rates as high as 3.2 GT/s. The new 3D TLC NAND memory will initially be used to build high-capacity and high-performance SSDs, which will help to solidify Samsung's position in the storage market.

Diving right in, Samsung is conspicuously avoiding to list the number of layers in their latest generation NAND, which is the principle driving factor in increasing capacity generation-on-generation. The company's current 8th gen V-NAND is 236 layers – similar to its major competitors – and word on the street is that 9th gen V-NAND ups that to 290 layers, though this remains to be confirmed.

Regardless, Samsung says that its 9th generation V-NAND memory boasts an approximate 50% improvement in bit density over its 8th generation predecessor. Driving this gains, the company cites the miniaturization of the cell size, as well as the integration of enhanced memory cell technologies that reduce interference and extend the lifespan of the cells. With their latest NAND technology, Samsung has also been able to eliminate dummy channel holes, thus reducing the planar area of the memory cells.

Interestingly, today's announcement also marks the first time that Samsung has publicly confirmed their use of string stacking in their NAND, referring to it as their "double-stack structure." The company is widely believed to have been using sting stacking back in their 8th generation NAND as well, however this was never confirmed by the company. Regardless, the use of string stacking is only going to increase from here, as vendors look to keep adding layers to their NAND dies, while manufacturing variability and channel hole tolerances make it difficult to produce more than 150-200 layers in a single stack.

Speaking of channel holes, another key technological enhancement in the 9th gen V-NAND is Samsung's advanced 'channel hole etching' technology. This process improves manufacturing productivity by enabling the simultaneous creation of electron pathways within a double-stack structure. This method is crucial as it enables efficient drilling through more layers, which is increasingly important as cell layers are added.

The latest V-NAND also features the introduction of a faster NAND flash interface, Toggle DDR 5.1, which boosts peak data transfer rates by 33% to 3.2 GT/s, or almost 400MB/sec for a single die. Additionally, 9th gen V-NAND's power consumption has been reduced by 10%, according to Samsung. Though Samsung doesn't state under what conditions – presumably, this is at iso-frequency rather than max frequency.

Samsung's launch of 1Tb TLC V-NAND is set to be followed by the release of a quad-level cell (QLC) model later this year.

"We are excited to deliver the industry’s first 9th-gen V-NAND which will bring future applications leaps forward," said SungHoi Hur, Head of Flash Product & Technology of the Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. "In order to address the evolving needs for NAND flash solutions, Samsung has pushed the boundaries in cell architecture and operational scheme for our next-generation product. Through our latest V-NAND, Samsung will continue to set the trend for the high-performance, high-density solid-state drive (SSD) market that meets the needs for the coming AI generation."

Western Digital Launches PC SN5000S SSD: Low-Cost Meets High Performance

Western Digital has introduced its new series of SSDs aimed at mainstream PCs, which combine high performance and low cost. The Western Digital PC SN5000S family of DRAM-less drives uses the company's 3D QLC NAND memory and an in-house-developed platform, so the SSDs promise to be relatively inexpensive. Meanwhile, their sequential read performance reaches 6,000 MB/s.

Western Digital's PC SN5000S drives are based on the company's latest in-house controller, which supports a PCIe 4.0 x4 host interface and BICS6 3D QLC NAND memory. The controller fully supports Western Digital's nCache 4.0 HybridSLC technology with endurance monitoring to ensure decent performance, RSA-3K and SHA-384 encryption, and TCG Opal 2.02 and Pyrite security capabilities.

On the capacity side, Western Digital's PC SN5000S drives will be available in 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB configurations. As for performance, the 2TB PC SN5000S is rated for up to 6,000 MB/s sequential read speed, up to 5,600 MB/s sequential write speed, up to 750,000 random read IOPS, and up to 900,000 random write IOPS. The SSDs will be available in M.2-2230 and M.2-2280 form factors.

When it comes to endurance, Western Digital rates 2TB PC SN5000S at 600 terabytes to be written, 1TB version at 300TBW, and 512GB at 150TBW, which is significantly lower compared to entry-level SSDs with similar capacities (yet higher compared to WD Green-branded drives). 

While the performance of Western Digital's PC SN5000S hardly impresses our avid readers, who tend to look at the highest-end SSDs, 1TB and 2TB versions offer considerably higher performance than most entry-level drives on the market today. What disappoints is the relatively low endurance of Western Digital's new SSDs compared to entry-level drives from other makers.

Western Digital primarily markets its PC SN5000S solid-state drives for OEMs, where they succeed the company's SN740-series. For PC makers, the drives are fast enough, and perhaps more importantly, they support advanced encryption technologies as well as TCG Opal 2.02 and Pyrite security capabilities, which is crucial for desktops and laptops sold to various U.S. government agencies.

Source: Western Digital

Patriot Reveals Viper PV553 SSD: 12.4 GB/s with a Blower Fan

Patriot has formally introduced its first solid-state drives featuring a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface aimed at demanding users. The Viper PV553 SSD uses the company's all-new active cooling system boasting an aluminum radiator, a blower fan, and a special heat shield that promises to ensure the best possible cooling for consistent performance under high workloads.

Set to be available in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB configurations, Patriot's Viper PV553 uses Micron's 232-layer 3D TLC NAND memory and we presume Phison's PS5026-E26 controller as Patriot is a loyal partner of the Taiwan-based SSD controller developer.

As for performance, Patriot rates its 2 TB and 4 TB PV553 for sequential read/write speeds of up to 12,400 MB/s and 11,800 MB/s as well as up to 1.4 million random 4K read and write IOPS. Meanwhile, the 1 TB model is slightly slower and offers read/write speeds of up to 11,700 MB/s and 9,500 MB/s as well as up to 1.3/1.4 million read/write IOPS.

The drives come in an M.2-2280 form-factor and are compatible with desktops that have sufficient space inside as Patriot's Viper PV553 SSDs are equipped with quite an extraordinary cooling system to take away 11W of thermal power that they can dissipate. The cooler (which features a 16.5 mm z-height) employs a rather big aluminum radiator that covers both the controller and memory chips, a blower fan, thermal pads on both sides of the drive, and an aluminum casing — which the company calls heat shield — that directs air produced by the fan through the radiator's fins to maximize cooling performance.

The extensive cooling is supposed to ensure that Patriot's Viper PV553 drives sustains performance even under severe workloads. In fact, Patriot says that the cooler ensures that the drive maintains temperature at about 45ºC in normal room temperature conditions.

Meanwhile, PV553 SSDs are not Patriot's fastest drives. Recently the company demonstrated its Viper PV573 SSDs that use Micron's B58R 3D TLC NAND with a 2400 MT/s data transfer rate and offer a sequential read and write speed of up to 14,000 MB/s and 12,000 MB/s, respectively. That drive will perhaps get more benefits from the new cooling system, but it will be available at a later date.

As it is always the case with Patriot's premium SSDs, the Viper PV553 drives are backed by a five-year warranty and are guaranteed to sustain 700, 1400, and 3000 terabytes to be written.

Corsair Launches MP600 Elite: Inexpensive Phison E27T-Based Drives

While enthusiasts are now focused mostly on SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 interface, there are many people who will be just fine with drives featuring a PCIe 4.0 interface to upgrade their PlayStation 5 or PCs bought a few years ago. To address these customers, SSD makers need to offer something that offers the right balance between price and performance. This is exactly what Corsair does with its MP600 Elite devices.

Corsair this week has released a new line of SSDs aimed at the mainstream market, the MP600 Elite. The drives are based on Phison's low-power highly-integrated PS5027-E27T platform, which is geared towards building mainstream, DRAM-less drives. The controller supports both 3D TLC and 3D QLC NAND flash via a four channel, Toggle 5.0/ONFi 5.0 interface, with data transfer rates up to 3600 MT/s. Meanwhile host connectivity is provided via a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface.

With its MP600 Elite SSDs, Corsair is not trying to offer the fastest PCIe Gen4 drives on the market, but rather attempts to offer the maximum value for 3D TLC-powered 1 TB, 2 TB as well as 4 TB configurations. The drives will offer sequential read performance of up to 7,000 MB/s and write performance of up to 6,500 MB/s, as well as random read and write speeds of up to 1,000K and 1,200K IOPS respectively, which is not bad for a PCIe Gen4 SSDs.

To maximize compatibility of its MP600 Elite drives (and make it compatible with Sony's PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Slim), Corsair offers them both with a tiny aluminum heatspreader and an even thinner graphene heatspreader.

The main idea behind the Corsair MP600 Elite is its affordability: it does not require DRAM or a sophisticated cooling system, which optimizes the manufacturer's costs. Meanwhile, Corsair offers 1 TB MP600 Elite SSD with a graphene heatspreader for $89.99 and 2 TB MP600 Elite SSD with a graphene heatspreader for $164.99 (whereas versions with an aluminum heatsink are $5 cheaper), which is not particularly cheap. For example, a faster Corsair MP600 Pro LPX 2 TB costs $169.99.

Every drive is comes with a five-year warranty and can endure up to 1,200 terabytes written (TBW).

TeamGroup Reveals 14GB/s Innogrit IG5666-Based T-Force Ge Pro PCIe 5.0 SSD

Virtually all client SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface released to date use Phison's PS5026-E26 controller. Apparently, TeamGroup decided to try something different and introduced a drive powered by a completely different platform, the Innogrit IG5666. The T-Force Ge Pro SSD not only uses an all-new platform, but it also boasts with fast 3D NAND to enable a sequential read speed of up to 14 GB/s, which almost saturates the PCIe 5.0 x4 bus.

TeamGroup's T-Force Ge Pro PCIe 5.0 SSDs will be among the first drives to use the Innogrit IG5666 controller, which packs multiple cores that can handle an LDPC ECC algorithm with a 4096-bit code length, features low power consumption, has eight NAND channels, is made on a 12 nm-class process technology, and has a PCIe 5.0 x4 host interface. The drives will be available in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB configurations as well as will rely on high-performance 3D TLC NAND memory with a 2400 MT/s interface speed to guarantee maximum performance.

Indeed, 2 TB and 4TB T-Force Ge Pro drives are rated for an up to 14,000 MB/s sequential read speed as well as an up to 11,800 MB/s sequential write speed, which is in line with the highest-end SSDs based on the Phison E26 controller. Meanwhile, TeamGroup does not disclose random performance offered by these SSDs.

What is noteworthy is that to T-Force Ge Pro drives are equipped with a simplistic graphene heatspreader, which is said to be enough to sustain such high-performance levels under loads. Usage of such a cooler makes it easy to fit a T-Force Ge Pro into almost any system, a major difference with many of Phison E26-based drives. Of course, only reviews will reveal whether such a cooling system is indeed enough to properly cool the SSDs, but the fact that TeamGroup decided to go with a thin cooler is notable.

TeamGroup is set to offer its T-Force Ge Pro SSDs with a five-year warranty. Amazon, Newegg, and Amazon Japan will start taking pre-orders on these drives on February 9, 2024. Prices are currently unknown.

Sabrent's Rocket 5 SSD Rockets to 14,169 MB/s, Available Soon

Sabrent on Friday announced the latest addition to its Rocket family of high-performance SSDs, the Rocket 5. Rated for sequential read speeds of over 14,000 MB/s and up to 1.4 million of random read/write IOPS, the drive is slated to be the fastest Phison-powered PCIe 5.0 drive released thus far. The Rocket 5 will work with regular coolers provided by motherboards, but will also come bundled with a sizable cooling system featuring a heat pipe and a fan.

Today's high-end PCIe Gen5 SSDs based on the Phison PS5026-E26 controller typically offer maximum sequential read speeds of 10 to 12 GB/second, depending on the generation of NAND used with the powerful controller. Initial drives were paired with 1600 MT/sec NAND, while more recent drives have been paired with 2000 MT/sec NAND. But with 2400 MT/sec NAND finally becoming available, Sabrent has been working with Phison to push the limit of what their controller can do, and finally come close to saturating the nearly 16GB/second PCIe 5.0 x4 interface.

So Sabrent went on to a mission to build a Phison E26-based SSD that could fully utilize a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface. The company first outlined plans to build a drive sequential read speed of over 14,000 MB/s in March last year and then demonstrated an SSD that could hit 14,179 MB/s in July. Hitting a particular performance level in a lab is one thing, but making a reliable storage product that consistently hits such a speed and does not cost an arm and a leg is another, so the company said it would take it a while to make its Rocket 5 a commercial product.

The scarce availability of fast 3D NAND has been the most critical bottleneck, with Sabrent (and other drive makers) waiting on Micron and others to begin shipping 2400 MT/sec TLC NAND in high volumes – which is now finally happening.

On Friday, Sabrent finally introduced its Rocket 5 family, which will consist of three models: initial 1 TB and 2 TB models, while a 4 TB model will come later. The higher-end 2 TB and 4 TB drives will offer a sequential read speed of up to 14,000 MB/s and a sequential write speed of up to 12,000 MB/s, as well as a random read/write performance of 1.4 million IOPS. The 1 TB model will be slightly slower due to lower level of parallelism, but it will still be measurably faster than many of the drives featuring a PCIe Gen5 x4 interface available today.

Interestingly, by peak performance of range-topping Rocket 5 drives is shown at 14,169 MB/s for reads and 12,756 MB/s for writes. Perhaps, some additional firmware tweaks will ensure even higher performance than Sabrent lists today, though we will see about that.

The company says that the Sabrent Rocket 5 drives will run just fine with heatsinks offered by high-end motherboards. Though for systems that for some reason do not come with pre-built heatsinks, Sabrent will bundle a rather sizable active cooler as well, for customers who need better cooling or just intend to beat on the drive with very long sustained writes.

Sabrent has not yet announced the pricing of its Rocket 5 drives. Though with TLC NAND prices currently on an upswing – never mind the high-end TLC Sabrent's drive will need to use – it's not too surprising to see drive manufacturers cautious about announcing drive pricing before anything is actually shipping.

Phison To Unveil 14.7 GB/s PCIe 5.0 SSD and Cheap USB4 Drives at CES 2024

CES 2024 is a few weeks away, so Phison shared its plans for the consumer electronics industry's biggest trade show this week. Among the headliners of the event will be the company's latest PS5026-E26 Max14um platform for top-of-the-range PCIe Gen5 SSDs, as well as the PS2251-21 (U21) single-chip platform for USB4 drives that brings together great speeds and cost efficiency.

The company's PS5026-E26 Max14um platform, demonstrated back in August, relies on the PS5026-E26 controller with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface and I/O+ technology coupled with heavily tuned firmware to enable up to 14.7 GB/s sequential reads and up to 12 GB/s sequential writes with Micron's B58R 3D TLC NAND devices featuring a 2400 MT/s data transfer rate. Perhaps more importantly, drives based on the 'maximum' platform are projected to offer 1.5 million random read IOPS and 1.6 million random write IOPS, according to Phison's slide demonstrated at Flash Memory Summit.

One of the particularly interesting wrinkles of the PS5026-E26 Max14um PCIe Gen 5 SSD platform is that it needs decent cooling (just like other E26-based drives, to be honest), so to get to a 14.7 GB/s sequential read speed, Phison used Frore Systems's AitJet Mini cooling systems that use tiny vibrating MEMS membranes to generate airflows. We can only wonder whether Phison will recommend using these cooling devices for the PS5026-E26 Max14um-powered drives, but at least SSD suppliers have such an option.

Another product that Phison will demonstrate at CES is its Phison PS2251-21 (U21) single-chip solution suited for small portable storage devices 'in conventional and unconventional form factors' with a USB4 interface. The company says that these drives will offer performance of up to 4 GB/s, which is higher than what the best SSDs with a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface provide. A single-chip solution like this could enable inexpensive, high-performance external USB4 drives and direct-attached storage devices, which are non-existent today.

In addition to the maxed-out PS5026-E26 Max14um platform and the PS2251-21 (U21) single-chip USB4 storage solution, Phison will again demonstrate its low-power PCIe Gen5 PS5031-E31T controller platform for low-cost DRAMless SSDs that features a quad-channel NAND architecture and promises a sequential read speed of up to 10.8GB/s and capacities up to 8 TB. Also, the company will showcase its low-power PS5027-E27T, a controller for M.2-2230 SSDs with a PCIe Gen4 interface, which will come in handy for devices like Asus ROG Ally or Valve's Steam Deck.

Corsair Releases MP700 Pro SSDs: Up 12.4 GB/s With Three Cooling Options

Corsair has introduced its MP700 Pro-series solid-state drives with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface that offer sequential read speed of up to 12.4 GB/s. The new high-end drive family offers a trio of cooling options, including active air cooling and liquid cooling. The SSDs will complement the company's MP700-series PCIe Gen5 drives and will offer a new level of performance for PC enthusiasts.

Corsair's MP700 Pro drives are based on Phison's PS5026-E26 controller as well what initial teardowns have discovered to be 232 layer Micron 3D TLC NAND memory. Compared to their earlier E26-based MP700 drive, Corsair has been able to increase the drive's maximum sequential read speed to 12.4 GB/s and maximum sequential write speed to 11.8 GB/s thanks to the use of faster NAND, which offers a higher 2000 MT/sec transfer rate (versus the original's 1600 MT/sec rate). In addition, the company increased random read speed to 1.5 million IOPS and random write speed to 1.6 million IOPS, which is comparable to speeds offered by enterprise-grade SSDs.

As far as capacity points are concerned, Corsair's MP700 Pro are currently available in 1 TB and 2 TB configurations, whereas 4 TB versions will be available sometimes in the future.

In addition to very high out-of-box performance, there is another selling point that Corsair's MP700 Pro drives have. They are available with three different cooling system to cater different PC form-factors and audiences. For high-performance laptops and compact desktops, Corsair offers MP700 Pro with a simplistic graphene heatspreader; for high-performance desktops, the company will offer these drives with an aluminum heatsink and a fan to ensure sufficient cooling and consistent performance even under high loads; whereas for owners of PCs with custom-built liquid cooling the company will offer a SSDs with a waterblock.

When the first M.2-2280 solid-state drives with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface hit the market earlier this year, the majority of PCIe Gen5 SSDs topped out at a 10 GB/s sequential reads and writes since fast 3D NAND chips were in short supply. Now that 3D NAND with a 2000 MT/s interface is getting more widespread, Corsair and other manufacturers of SSDs are rolling out drives that can hit 12.4 GB/s read speeds.

In fact, Sabrent and some other makers are working on even faster SSDs with around 14 GB/s read speeds, so it is well possible that we are going to see a yet another 'sub-generation' PCIe Gen5 drives that will saturate a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface.

Solidigm Lays Off Employees Due to Industry Downturn

The solid state storage industry has been in a well-documented slide for the better part of the last year now. With storage product demand from both the client and datacenter businesses down well off of its highs in a notoriously cyclical business, we've already seen the big three memory manufacturers – SK hynix, Samsung, and Micron – significantly cut back on NAND production. And now the repercussions of this downturn are starting to spread to the SSD makers themselves, with Solidigm confirming that they have laid off employees due to the industry downturn.

Responding to an information request from AnandTech, Solidigm, Intel's former SSD business unit that is now controlled by SK hynix, confirmed that the company has recently engaged in layoffs. Terming it a 'modest' reduction in headcount, the company disclosed that it 'executed a modest workforce reduction' on Wednesday, but declined to provide further details.

"Due to the prolonged downturn in the semiconductor industry and its impact on market conditions, Solidigm has executed a workforce reduction," a statement by Solidigm reads. "The company is offering support and severance to colleagues who are departing. We are immensely grateful to our team members who have made meaningful contributions while at Solidigm. They will be greatly missed."

Solidigm is not disclosing their new headcount, though as of September, 2022, the company had more than 2,000 employees in 20 locations around the world. Earlier this year the company closed down its branch in South Korea and hired agencies to handle its sales in the country. It looks like the current announcement also relates to various business, management, marketing, and sales roles.

Solidigm inherited its personnel from Intel's NAND business unit, which the company agreed to sell to SK hynix in October, 2020. Solidigm closed the first stage of the deal in late 2021 and gained control over Intel's NAND and SSD businesses and NAND memory fab in Dalian, China. Under the terms of the agreement with SK hynix, Intel transferred some of its NAND business unit employees to Solidigm to operate as a SSD business.

At this point there has not been a public announcement of the layoffs by Solidigm/SK hynix, so it remains unclear what the full impact to the business will be. SK hynix has just released its Q3'2023 earnings report, where the company reported net losses of 2.185 trillion won (~1.6B USD), and will be holding its quarterly conference call this evening (the morning of the 26th in Korea), at which point we may find out more about the company's plans for their struggling subsidiary. Earlier reports to AnandTech had indicated more significant layoffs had taken place, though 'modest' leaves some room for interpretation.

Samsung 990 Pro SSD Gets 4TB Model

When Samsung launched its 990 Pro family of SSDs for retail market last year, it only introduced 1 TB and 2 TB models, surprisingly omitting premium high-capacity 4 TB version. Now, the company is about to correct this wrong by launching 4 TB version this fall, the world's largest SSD supplier revealed in an X post.

You wanted it so badly, we had no choice but to deliver. The 4TB 990 PRO by #SamsungSSD is coming. Same blazing-fast storage with double the max capacity for gaming, video, 3D editing, and more. Stay tuned for more details. pic.twitter.com/B3iRso9Q3p

— Samsung Semiconductor (@SamsungDSGlobal) August 24, 2023

"You wanted it so badly, we had no choice but to deliver," the company's post reads. "The 4TB 990 PRO by #SamsungSSD is coming. Same blazing-fast storage with double the max capacity for gaming, video, 3D editing, and more. Stay tuned for more details."

From performance point of view, Samsung's 990 Pro 4 TB drive offer an up to 7,450 MB/s sequential read speed and an up to 6,900 MB/s sequential write speed, which is in line with what 1 TB and 2 TB models offer. As for random operations, the SSD achieves 1,400,000 IOPS for reads and 1,550,000 IOPS for writes, which is comparable to the performance of other flagship SSDs.

Since Samsung's 990 Pro is a family of SSDs with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, the 4 TB drive may not attract attention of owners of shiny new systems based on AMD Ryzen 7000-series or Intel Core 12000 and 13000-series processors. However, there are loads of PCs with M.2 slots featuring a PCIe 4.0 interface just waiting for an upgrade and 4 TB SSD makes a lot of sense these days given low prices of 3D TLC NAND.

According to Samsung's spec sheets, the company intends to offer two versions of 990 Pro 4 TB SSDs: one with a simplistic graphene heat spreader to maximize compatibility with laptops, another with a larger aluminum heatsink to ensure consistent performance under high loads.

Samsung has not formally disclosed MSRP of its Samsung 990 Pro 4 TB SSD, though expect it to be priced in line with market realities. The drive is covered with a five-year limited warranty with an endurance rating of 2400 terabytes written (TBW).

Silicon Motion Readies PCIe Gen5 SSD Platform with 3.5W Power Consumption [UPDATED]

UPDATE 8/24: As it turns out, the 3.5W figure referes to power consumption of the controller alone, not the whole SSD. The story has been updated accordingly. We also clarify power consumption of Phison E26-based drives.

Virtually all PCIe Gen5 SSDs released to date are relatively power-hungry and require a massive cooling system, effectively preventing their installation into compact desktops and notebooks. But Silicon Motion's next-generation SM2508 SSD platform promises to change that and enable ultra-high-performance drives with a PCIe 5.0 interface and lower power consumption due to a controller that consumes 3.5W. The company is showcasing prototypes of its PCIe Gen5 client drives at the Flash Memory Summit 2023.

The Silicon Motion SM2508 SSD controller features eight NAND channels supporting interface speed of up to 3600 MT/s per channel and capable of delivering sequential read and write speeds of up to 14 GB/s as well random read and write speeds of up to 2.5 million IOPS, which is comparable to capabilities of enterprise-grade SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface. 

Perhaps the most critical aspect of the SM2508 controller is its reduced power consumption, which is around 3.5W, according to Silicon Motion. SMI does not disclose whether 3.5W is idle, average, or peak power consumption of the controller. But reasoning things out, 3.5W seems to be too high for peak, and even if it is average power consumption, it is considerably lower when compared to the average power consumption of PCIe Gen5 SSDs based on the Phison PS5026-E26 controller (around 10W), which is obvious given that we are comparing consumption of the controller to power consumption of a drive. Phison says that its E26 controller consumes around 5W and another 5W is used by 3D NAND chips and DRAM, so the difference between power consumption of the controllers is not that significant. Meanwhile, it will be interesting to compare power consumption of actual drives based on the SM2508 and PS5026-E26.

The fastest 3D NAND flash memory devices currently feature a 2400 MT/s interface. Using such memory is crucial to fully saturate a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface and deliver sequential read/write performance of 13 – 14 GB/s. Support for a 3600 MT/s ONFI/Toggle DDR interface will allow the building of ultra-fast SSDs without using many memory devices, which is essential as next-generation 3D TLC devices are expected to have capacities of 1 Tb and larger.

Silicon Motion does not disclose many details about its SM2508, but we know from unofficial sources that the chip is made on TSCM's 12FFC (12 nm-class, compact low-power production node) and has been sampling since January 2023. Meanwhile, the company has targeted late 2023 – early 2024 as the launch timeframe for its consumer PCIe Gen5 SSD platform.

In addition to demonstrating its first client PC-bound SM2508-based SSDs at the FMS 2023, Silicon Motion is showcasing its MonTitan turnkey enterprise PCIe Gen5 x5 SSD solutions based on its SM8366 controller introduced last year. The SM8366 controller features 16 NAND channels at 2400 MT/s and can enable SSDs with capacities of up to 128 TB that offer up to 14 GB/s sequential read/write performance and up to 3M/2.8M random read/write performance. Samples of MonTitan SSDs will be demonstrated at the FMS 2023.

Source: Silicon Motion

Kioxia's CD8P SSD Unveiled: Up to 30.72 TB, PCI 5.0 x4 Interface

Hyperscale data centers have very specific requirements for different tiers of storage devices: some tiers need maximum performance, and others demand maximum storage density. Kioxia's new CD8P drives for data centers seem to combine both high storage capacity of up to 30.72 TB and high sequential read performance of up to 12,000 MB/s and up to 2 million random read IOPS, which somewhat blurs the lines between storage tiers and provides new opportunities.

Kioxia's CD8P single-port drives are based on the company's proprietary controller, firmware, and time-proven 112-layer BICS 5 3D TLC NAND memory. The NVMe 2.0-compliant controller and firmware fully support enterprise-grade features like the company's exclusive flash die failure protection, power loss protection, end-to-end data protection, sanitize instant erase (SIE), and self-encrypting drive (SED). Since the new SSDs are designed for hyperscale data centers, they come in E3.S and U.2 form factors.

Regarding performance, Kioxia's new CD8P SSDs offer up to 12,000/5,500 MB/s sequential/write speed and up to 2,000,000/400,000 random read/write 4K IOPS. Meanwhile, there will be two versions of CD8P: CD8P-V for mixed-use applications with up to three drive writes per day with capacities up to 12.8 TB and CD8P-R for read-intensive workloads with up to one drive writes per day capacities of 30.72 TB.

An avid reader will undoubtedly notice that the CD8P family of SSDs is not Kioxia's first lineup of high-capacity drives with a PCIe Gen5 x4 interface, as the company has been shipping its CM7-series SSDs for about a year now. This is, of course, correct, but Kioxia's CM7 is designed for enterprise environments, which is why they support dual-port for extended availability, FIPS SED capability, and maximized performance (up to 14 GB/s and 2.7 million 4K IOPS). Hyperscalers barely need such functionality, and the lack of it will probably make CD8Ps slightly cheaper than CM7 drives.

Kioxia positions its CD-series SSDs for s broad range of scale-out and cloud workloads, and indeed, these applications will benefit from their extended performance and capacity. In addition, these new drives could be used for various AI-oriented workloads (particularly on the edge) that can take advantage of high storage density, high performance, and prices that promise to be below those of enterprise-oriented CM7.

Kioxia has not decided when it plans to start shipping its CD8P SSD lineup of SSDs. Still, since hyper scalers need some time to validate and qualify the new storage devices, these new drives will take some time to leave assembly factories. Meanwhile, companies that will use CD8P drives for things like edge AI deployments may deploy these new SSDs somewhat faster if they find them suitable for their workloads.

Adata Reveals Its First PCIe Gen5 SSD: Legend 970

Adata has introduced its first PCIe 5.0 SSD, the Legend 970. A Phison E26-based design, the Legend 970 pairs Phison's high-end controller with a sophisticated active cooling system that promises predictable performance even under high loads. The Legend 970 SSD is aimed at high-performance desktops that can take advantage of fast storage devices.

Adata's Legend 970 drives come in 1 TB and 2 TB capacities and are rated for an up to 10,000 MB/s sequential read/write speed as well as a 1.4 million random read/write IOPS, performance levels in line with those of many current-generation enterprise-grade SSDs. The drives fully support all modern SSD technologies that one comes to expect from a contemporary drive, including SLC cache, Low Density Parity Check Code (LDPC) error correction, and AES 256-bit high-level encryption.

Like other PCIe Gen 5 SSDs available now, the Legend 970 product uses Phison's PS5026-E26 controller. As for memory, the drives use Micron's 232-layer TLC NAND with a 1600 MT/s interface.

One of the key selling points of Adata's Legend 970 is its cooling system, which although a bit on the bulky side of matters, is designed to be robust enough to keep the drive from thermal throttling even under high, sustained loads. Though at 80.6×24.2×17.9mm in size, the resulting SSD is decided a desktop part – and even then the drive will need a fair bit of clearance to fit.

Adata's iniital Legend 970 SSD will eventually be joined by at least one other PCIe 5.0 SSD as well. The company's XPG division is working on their NeonStorm SSD, which uses a self-contained liquid cooling system, and is rated for read speeds of up to 14GB/second (thanks to TLC NAND with a 2400 MT/s interface).

Adata's Legend 970 drives will come with a five-year global warranty. The company hasn't published any pricing information, though we'd expect the drives to be more or less in line with other first-generation PCIe Gen5 SSDs.

Corsair Launches MP600 Mini: M.2 2230 SSD Brings Big Performance

Corsair has introduced its first ever SSD in an M.2-2230 form-factor that is aimed at ultra-compact systems like Valve's Steam Deck as well as Microsoft's Surface Pro 8 and 9. The MP600 Mini drive delivers 1 TB of storage space and strong performance in a miniature package.

Corsair's MP600 Mini is based around Phison's E21T controller mated with 3D TLC NAND memory (according to Tom's Hardware) and is rated with an up to 4,800 MB/s sequential read/write speed as well as an up to 850K/1.1M random read/write IOPS. The SSD consumes about 4.3W on average and comes with a simplistic graphene heatspreader, which makes it compatible with the vast majority of systems out there.

Since Corsair's MP600 Mini uses a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, it will shine in the vast majority of modern laptops and hybrid PCs. Though as far as Valve's Steam Deck is concerned, keep in mind that it uses a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, so the MP600 Mini won't get to fully stretch its legs there in terms of throughpt.

The market for retail M2.2230 SSDs has traditionally been a small one, owing to the limited use of the drives in user-upgradable machines. However the recent launch of the Steam Deck in particular has kicked up significant demand for these SSDs – especially high-performance drives befitting a game console. So Corsair's MP600 Mini is a welcome addition to the space. 

Corsair currently sells its MP600 Mini directly for $110, which might seem expensive for a 1 TB drive, but keeping in mind that we are dealing with a pretty fast model that comes in an M.2-2230 form-factor (a rare combination), the price is consistent with similar drives.

Crucial Preps T700 PCIe 5.0 SSD With Write Speeds Up To 12.4 GB/s

Crucial has started to tease the T700, the company's first mainstream PCIe 5.0 SSD. Not to be confused with the Terminator T-700, the T700's product page has already gone live but still lacks some of the M.2 2280 SSD's finer details. However, it does show some basic specifications that suggest that the T700 will deliver higher performance than rival first-generation PCIe 5.0 drives.

Different as they may look, the first wave of SSDs all have something in common: they leverage Phison's PS5026-E26 PCIe 5.0 controller and its eight-channel design. There are other PCIe 5.0 SSD controllers for storage vendors to pick from, including Silicon Motion's SM2508 or InnoGrit's IG5666. However, the E26 has become the de facto PCIe 5.0 controller for PCIe 5.0 SSDs.

The T700, like many rivals before it, utilizes the E26 controller. Crucial rates the T700 with sequential read and writes up to 12.4 GB/s and 11.8 GB/s, respectively. It's twice as fast as the P5 Plus PCIe 4.0 SSD and up to 22 times faster than the MX500 SATA SSD. Crucial has granted Linus Tech Tips a small preview of the T700. An extract from the previewer's guide has exposed the T700's sequential and random performance. According to the snippet, the expected sequential read and write performance on the T700 is 12 GB/s and 11 GB/s. The figures are somewhat lower than the specifications from the T700's product page. The T700's numbers reach 1.5 million IOPS reads and writes regarding random performance. The performance varies slightly between the different capacities.

If the T700 delivers on the claims, it would make the drive one of the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSDs and put it ahead of its competitors, such as the Corsair MP700, Gigabyte Aorus Gen5 1000, or the MSI Spatium M570 Pro. The only faster drives in development are Adata's Project Nighthawk and Project Blackbird SSDs, with sequential read and write speeds of 14 GB/s and 12 GB/s and 14 GB/s and 10 GB/s, respectively. Adata's forthcoming PCIe 5.0 SSDs are the only confirmed drives to employ the Innogrit IG5666 PCIe 5.0 controller.

The E26 controller can deliver sequential read and write speeds up to 14 GB/s and 11.8 GB/s, respectively, if paired with 2,400 MT/s NAND. Unfortunately, current PCIe 5.0 SSDs are far from exploiting the E26's full potential due to the limited supplies of that newest-generation NAND. Many drives sport 1,600 MT/s NAND, so they fail to break the 10 GB/s barrier. Like its competitors, the Crucial T700 uses Micron 232-layer 3D TLC NAND chips. Micron's 232-layer NAND runs at different speeds: 1,600 MT/s, 2,000 MT/s, and 2,400 MT/s. Crucial didn't specify the grade of the NAND with the T700, but given the SSD's advertised performance, it stands to reason that the drive likely uses the 2,000 MT/s variant. There are obvious perks to Micron being the parent company. Crucial likely has dibs on the higher-binned NAND chips, so securing 2,000 MT/s NAND isn't as big of an issue. Surprisingly, Crucial didn't equip the T700 with 2,400 MT/s, but that could be a cost-benefit decision, or 2,400 MT/s NAND yields haven't reached the point where there's a steady supply.

Crucial offers the T700 in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB capacities. The 4 TB model has the best endurance at 2,400 TBW. The T700 is available with and without a heatsink, so the drive will fit into desktops, laptops, and gaming consoles. Linus Tech Tips' results showed the maximum operating temperatures between the T700 with the included heatsink (67 degrees Celsius) and the T700 with the motherboard heatsink (66 degrees Celsius) were similar after 15 minutes of stressing the SSD at 100% disk usage. However, there weren't any tests with the non-heatsink version. Many PCIe 5.0 SSDs come with beefy passive heatsinks, and some even have a tiny cooling fan for active cooling. On the T700's product page, Crucial recommends that consumers install the non-heatsink version on a motherboard or an alternate heatsink to ensure the best performance.

Crucial still needs to reveal the pricing for the T700. However, the company tweeted that the T700 will be available in May, so it's a short wait before we get more details on the PCIe 5.0 drive.

Silicon Motion SM2268XT DRAM-less NVMe SSD Controller: PCIe 4.0 Speeds on a Budget

The excitement in the client SSD space recently has understandably been on the Gen 5 front. However, cooling requirements have made it difficult for vendors to bring effective M.2 NVMe Gen 5 SSDs to the market. In that context, it appears that Gen 4 M.2 SSDs will continue to have a much longer runway than was previously estimated. In order to better serve that market segment, Silicon Motion is introducing a new product in their PCIe 4.0-capable NVMe SSD controller lineup. The company's roadmap is not much of a secret, as we do expect their Gen 5 client controllers to land in Q4 2023 - in fact, an end product based on it from ADATA was already demonstrated by ADATA at the 2023 CES. However, today marks the official launch date for the SM2268XT - the third-generation DRAM-less Gen 4 SSD controller meant to play in the entry-level segment in terms of pricing, but move to the high end in terms of performance .

The key updates in the SM2268XT over the SM2267XT and SM2269XT are the increase in the per-channel data rate from 1600 MT/s to 3200 MT/s and support for the latest 2xx layer 3D TLC (as well as QLC) from different flash vendors. The new controller also brings in support for some NVMe 2.0 features (compared to NVMe 1.4 in the SM2267XT and SM2269XT). Like the SM2269XT, the LDPC engine codeword size in the SM2268XT is also 4KB (compared to 2KB in the SM2267XT). The move to a 12nm process also brings in better power efficiency.

THE SM2268XT will be competing against in-house controllers from Western Digital (such as the one used in the WD_BLACK SN770), and the upcoming Phison E21T as well as InnoGrit's RainierQX IG5220. The claimed performance numbers across all four corners for the SM2268XT are leading in its class.

The company indicates that the SM2268XT is currently sampling to its key customers and the launch of SSDs based on it should be imminent. We expect the usual suspects such as ADATA to announce SSDs based on the new controller soon.

Micron Launches 9400 NVMe Series: U.3 SSDs for Data Center Workloads

Micron is taking the wraps off their latest data center SSD offering today. The 9400 NVMe Series builds upon Micron's success with their third-generation 9300 series introduced back in Q2 2019. The 9300 series had adopted the U.2 form-factor with a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, and utilized their 64L 3D TLC NAND. With a maximum capacity of 15.36 TB, the drive matched the highest-capacity HDDs on the storage amount front at that time (obviously with much higher performance numbers). In the past couple of years, the data center has moved towards PCIe 4.0 and U.3 in a bid to keep up with performance requirements and unify NVMe, SAS, and SATA support. Keeping these in mind, Micron is releasing the 9400 NVMe series of U.3 SSDs with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface using their now-mature 176L 3D TLC NAND. Increased capacity per die is also now enabling Micron to present 2.5" U.3 drives with capacities up to 30.72 TB, effectively doubling capacity per rack over the previous generation.

Similar to the 9300 NVMe series, the 9400 NVMe series is also optimized for data-intensive workloads and comes in two versions - the 9400 PRO and 9400 MAX. The Micron 9400 PRO is optimized for read-intensive workloads (1 DWPD), while the Micron 9400 MAX is meant for mixed use (3 DWPD). The maximum capacity points are 30.72 TB and 25.60 TB respectively. The specifications of the two drive families are summarized in the table below.

The 9400 NVMe SSD series is already in volume production for AI / ML and other HPC workloads. The move to a faster interface, as well as higher-performance NAND enables a 77% improvement in random IOPS per watt over the previous generation. Micron is also claiming better all round performance across a variety of workloads compared to enterprise SSDs from competitors.

The Micron 9400 PRO goes against the Solidigm D7-5520, Samsung PM1733, and the Kioxia CM6-R. The Solidigm D7-5520 is handicapped by lower capacity points (due to its use of 144L TLC), resulting in lower performance against the 9400 PRO in all but the sequential reads numbers. The Samsung PM1733 also tops out at 15.36TB with performance numbers similar to that of the Solidigm model. The Kioxia CM6-R is the only other U.3 SSD with capacities up to 30.72TB. However, its performance numbers across all corners lags well behind the 9400 PRO's.

The Micron 9400 MAX has competition from the Solidigm D7-P5620, Samsung PM1735, and the Kioxia CM6-V. Except for sequential reads, the Solidigm D7-P5620 lags the 9400 MAX in performance as well as capacity points. The PM1735 is only available in an HHHL AIC form-factor and uses PCIe 4.0 x8 interface. So, despite its 8 GBps sequential read performance, it can't be deployed in a manner similar to that of the 9400 MAX. The Kioxia CM6-V tops out at 12.8TB and has lower performance numbers compared to the 9400 MAX.

Despite not being the first to launch 32TB-class SSDs into the data center market, Micron has ensured that their eventual offering provides top-tier performance across a variety of workloads compared to the competition. We hope to present some hands-on performance numbers for the SSD in the coming weeks.

SK hynix Announces 238 Layer NAND - Mass Production To Start In H1'2023

As the 2022 Flash Memory Summit continues, SK hynix is the latest vendor to announce their next generation of NAND flash memory at the show. Showcasing for the first time the company’s forthcoming 238 layer TLC NAND, which promises both improved density/capacity and improved bandwidth. At 238 layers, SK hynix has, at least for the moment, secured bragging rights for the greatest number of layers in a TLC NAND die – though with mass production not set to begin until 2023, it’s going to be a while until the company’s newest NAND shows up in retail products.

Following closely on the heels of Micron’s 232L TLC NAND announcement last week, SK hynix is upping the ante ever so slightly with a 238 layer design. Though the difference in layer counts is largely inconsequential when you’re talking about NAND dies with 200+ layers to begin with, in the highly competitive flash memory industry it gives SK hynix bragging rights on layer counts, breaking the previous stalemate between them, Samsung, and Micron at 176L.

From a technical perspective, SK hynix’s 238L NAND further builds upon the basic design of their 176L NAND. So we’re once again looking at a string stacked design, with SH hynix using a pair of 119 layer decks, up from 88 layers in the previous generation. This makes SK hynix the third flash memory vendor to master building decks over 100 layers tall, and is what’s enabling them to produce a 238L NAND design that holds the line at two decks.

SK hynix’s NAND decks continue to be built with their charge-trap, CMOS under Array (CuA) architecture, which sees the bulk of the NAND’s logic placed under the NAND memory cells. According to the company, their initial 512Gbit TLC part has a die size of 35.58mm², which works out to a density of roughly 14.39 Gbit/mm². That’s a 35% improvement in density over their previous-generation 176L TLC NAND die at equivalent capacities. Notably, this does mean that SK hynix will be ever so slightly trailing Micron’s 232L NAND despite their total layer count advantage, as Micron claims they’ve hit a density of 14.6 Gbit/mm² on their 1Tbit dies.

Speaking of 1Tbit, unlike Micron, SK hynix is not using the density improvements to build higher capacity dies – at least, not yet. While the company has announced that they will be building 1Tbit dies next year using their 238L process, for now they’re holding at 512Gbit, the same capacity as their previous generation. So all other factors held equal, we shouldn’t expect the first wave drives built using 238L NAND to have any greater capacity than the current generation. But, if nothing else, at least SK hynix’s initial 238L dies are quite small – though whether that translates at all to smaller packages remains to be seen.

Besides density improvements, SK hynix has also improved the performance and power consumption of their NAND. Like the other NAND vendors, SK hynix is using this upcoming generation of NAND to introduce ONFi 5.0 support. ONFi 5.0 is notable for not only increasing the top transfer rate to 2400MT/second – a 50% improvement over ONFi 4.2 – but it also introduces a new NV-LPDDR4 signaling method. As it’s based on LPDDR signaling (unlike the DDR3-derrived mode in ONFi 4.x), NV-LPDDR4 offers tangible reductions in the amount of power consumed by NAND signaling. SK hynix isn’t breaking their power consumption figures out to this level of detail, but for overall power consumption, they’re touting a 21% reduction in energy consumed for read operations. Presumably this is per bit, so it will be counterbalanced by the 50% improvement in bandwidth.

This week’s announcement comes as SK hynix has begun shipping samples of the 238L NAND to their customers. As previously mentioned, the company is not planning on kicking off mass production until H1’2023, so it will be some time before we see the new NAND show up in retail products. According to SK hynix, their plan is to start with shipping NAND for consumer SSDs, followed by smartphones and high-capacity server SSDs. That, in turn, will be followed up with the introduction of 1Tbit 238L NAND later in 2023.

Solidigm Announces P41 Plus SSD: Taking Another Shot at QLC With Cache Tiering

Although Intel is no longer directly in the SSD market these days, their SSD team and related technologies continue to live on under the SK hynix umbrella as Solidigm. Since their initial formation at the very end of 2021, Solidigm has been in the process of reestablishing their footing, continuing to sell and support Intel’s previous SSD portfolio while continuing development of their next generation of SSDs. On the enterprise side of matters this recently culminated in the launch of their new D7 SSDs. Meanwhile on the consumer side of matters, today at Flash Memory Summit the company is announcing their first post-Intel consumer SSD, the Solidigm P41 Plus

The P41 Plus is, at a high level, the successor to Intel’s 670p SSD, the company’s second-generation QLC-based SSD. And based on that description alone, a third generation QLC drive from Solidigm is something that few AnandTech readers would find remarkable. QLC makes for cheap high(ish) capacity SSDs, which OEMs love, while computing enthusiasts are decidedly less enthusiastic about them.

But then the P41 Plus isn’t just a traditional QLC drive.

One of the more interesting ventures out of Intel’s time as a client SSD manufacturer was the company’s forays into cache tiering. Whether it was using flash memory as a hard drive cache, using 3D XPoint as a hard drive cache, or even using 3D XPoint as a flash memory cache, Intel tried several ways to speed up the performance of slower storage devices in a cost-effective manner. And while Intel’s specific solutions never really caught on, Intel’s core belief that some kind of caching is necessary proved correct, as all modern TLC and QLC SSDs come with pseudo-SLC caches for improved burst write performance.

While they are divorced from Intel these days, Solidigm is picking up right where Intel left off, continuing to experiment with cache tiering. Coming from the same group that developed Intel’s mixed 3D XPoint/QLC drives such as the Optane Memory H20, Solidigm no longer has access to Intel’s 3D XPoint memory (and soon, neither will Intel). But they do have access to flash memory. So for their first solo consumer drive as a stand-alone subsidiary, Solidigm is taking a fresh stab at cache tiering, expanding the role of the pSLC cache to serve as both a write cache and a read cache.

Micron’s 232 Layer NAND Now Shipping: 1Tbit, 6-Plane Dies With 50% More I/O Bandwidth

Ahead of next week’s Flash Memory Summit, Micron this morning is announcing that their next-generation 232 layer NAND has begun shipping. The sixth generation of Micron’s 3D NAND technology, 232L is slated to offer both improved bandwidth and larger die sizes – most notably, introducing Micron’s first 1Tbit TLC NAND dies, which at this point are the densest in the industry. According to the company, the new NAND is already shipping to customers and in Crucial SSD products in limited volumes, with further volume ramping to take place later in the year.

Micron first announced their 232L NAND back in May during their Investor Day event, revealing that the NAND would be available this year, and that the company intended to ramp up production by the end of the year. And while that yield ramp is still ongoing, Micron’s Singapore fab is already capable of producing enough of the new NAND that Micron is comfortable in announcing it is shipping, albeit clearly in limited quantities.

From a technical perspective, Micron’s 232L NAND further builds upon the basic design elements Micron honed in that generation. So we’re once again looking at a string stacked design, with Micron using a pair of 116 layer decks, up from 88 layers in the previous generation. 116 layer decks, in turn, are notable as this is the first time Micron has been able to produce a single deck over 100 layers, a feat previously limited to Samsung. This in turn has allowed Micron to produce cutting-edge NAND with just two decks, something that may not be possible for much longer as companies push toward designs with over 300 total layers.

Micron’s NAND decks continue to be built with their charge-trap, CMOS under Array (CuA) architecture, which sees the bulk of the NAND’s logic placed under the NAND memory cells. Micron has long cited this as giving them an ongoing advantage in NAND density, and that’s once again on show for their 232L NAND. According to the company they’ve achieved a density of 14.6 Gbit/mm², which is about 43% denser than their 176L NAND. And, according to Micron, anywhere between 35% to 100% denser than competing TLC products.

The improved density has allowed Micron to finally produce their first 1Tbit TLC die, which from a productization standpoint means that Micron can now also produce 2TB chip packages by stacking 16 of their 232L dies. This is good news for SSD capacities, which at the high-end are often limited by the number of packages that can be placed. Though it does mean that there’s a potential loss of performance at lower capacities due to a decrease parallelism from implementing fewer packages.

At the same time, Micron has also been working on the size of their chip packaging, and as a result while the larger capacity means that their die size has increased on a generational basis (we estimate ~70.1mm² given Micron’s density figures), they’ve still shrunk their chip packaging by 28%. As a result, a single chip package is down from 12mm x 18mm (216mm²) to 11.5mm x 13.5mm (~155mm²). So for Micron’s downstream customers, the combination of the greater capacity and physically smaller packages for Micron’s NAND means that device manufacturers can cut down on the amount of space they allocate to NAND packages, or go the other direction and try to cram in even more packages into a similar amount of space.

Besides density improvements, the latest generation of Micron’s NAND is also allowing the company to upgrade their hardware to take advantage of newer I/O technologies, as well as to implement their own improvements to increase transfer speeds. The big news here is that Micron has increased the number of planes within their NAND die from 4 to 6, further improving the parallelism available within each die.  Quad (four) plane designs became common in the previous generation of NAND, and as the density of NAND grows, so too are the number of planes in order for transfer rates to keep up with these greater densities. Micron has confirmed that the planes in 232L NAND offer independent reads, though they aren’t being quite as explicit on what kind of wordline dependencies remain for writes.

This increase in parallelism, along with improved internal transfer rates, has allowed Micron to significantly improve their per-die read and write speeds. According to the company, read speeds have improved by over 75% over their 176L generation NAND, and meanwhile write speeds have outright doubled.

Coupled with this, Micron has also implemented the latest generation of ONFi on their peripheral logic. Finalized in 2021 and now rolling out in the first NAND products, ONFi increases controller-NAND transfer rates by 50%, bringing it to 2400MT/second. ONFi 5.0 also introduced a new NV-LPDDR4 signaling method, which is available with the same 2400MT/s rate but, as it’s based on LPDDR technology, consumes less power. According to Micron, they’re seeing per-bit energy transfer savings of over 30%, which makes for a significant reduction in energy consumption. Though as always with these sorts of comparisons, it’s worth noting that the bandwidth gains exceed the energy savings (50% vs. 30%), so our expectation is that overall energy consumption is going to go up for high-performance products that run at the fastest speeds supported by Micron’s 232L NAND.

As for productization, Micron is pitching 232L NAND as a full stack replacement for 176L NAND – meaning that Micron considers it suitable for everything from mobile and IoT to clients and data center products. To that end, the company is already making initial shipments to their customers, including their own Crucial subsidiary. As with past generations of Micron NAND, starting early with Crucial allows the company to get some hands-on experience in developing full-featured products with their new NAND before they roll it into their own enterprise equipment. Interestingly, however, Micron isn’t announcing any new Crucial products right now, which strongly implies that Crucial is going to begin implementing the new NAND in existing products. If that’s the case, then Crucial customers will want to pay attention to what’s going on and what revision of a drive they’re buying, as the larger 1Tb die could have performance implications for products originally designed around 512Gbit dies.

Wrapping things up, today’s announcement should be the tip of the iceberg for Micron’s 232L shipments. With volume ramping expected to continue through this end of this calendar year, Micron’s plans call for the company to significantly increase the amount of next-generation NAND they’re shipping, going well beyond these initial volumes. Ultimately, this means that products equipped with 232L NAND are going to be relatively sparse for this year, and will pick up in 2023 following the volume ramp. So while Micron’s 232L NAND is indeed shipping, from a consumer standpoint we’re likely still several months off (or more) from seeing it becoming a common fixture in SSDs and other products.

SK hynix Releases Platinum P41 SSD: Going Even Faster With PCIe 4 and 176L NAND

First introduced back at CES 2022, this morning SK hynix is finally kicking off sales of their new retail consumer SSD, the Platinum P41. The successor to the popular Gold P31, the P41 incorporates the latest controller and NAND technology from SK hynix, upgrading their flagship SSD lineup with PCIe 4.0 connectivity and the performance to match. Though with prices topping out at $260 for the 2TB model, it would seem that SK hynix has even greater ambition than before, placing the P41 squarely in the high-end segment of the SSD market.

Solidigm Launches First Post-Intel Enterprise SSDs: D7-P5620 and D7-P5520

Back in late 2021, Intel and SK hynix completed the first stage of their long-awaited transfer of Intel’s NAND (and NAND-based SSD) business to SK hynix. That company, in turn, took Intel’s NAND SSD assets and put them under their own subsidiary, Solidigm, who took over sales of Intel’s existing SSD portfolio. Now, a few months later, Solidigm is gearing up to release its first post-Intel SSDs, the enterprise-focused D7-P5520 and D7-P5620.

Diving right into matters, Solidigm is essentially picking up right where Intel left off, both in regards to product design and product naming. Intel was already seeing solid market penetration with its D-series branding, so there’s little reason to give up a good thing for the new Solidigm. In any case, the new drives are designed and marketed to slot right in as the next-generation parts in the D7 lineup, which is Solidigm’s highest performance drives for the enterprise and server market.

From a pure specification standpoint, the big news with the latest generation of drives is that Solidigm has doubled their capacities. The D7-P5620 will be available in capacities from 1.6TB to 12.8TB, while the D7-P5520 will go up to 15.36TB for its larger form factor drives. As you might expect, Solidigm is also using their own NAND here. The company's current tech is still their 144L TLC NAND, which means the P5620 has received a NAND upgrade (Intel never released a 144L P5600 series drive), while it's the same NAND as before for the P5520.

As with earlier iterations of the D7 family, both drives are built from the same platform – codename Arbordale Plus Refresh Refresh – meaning the same controller, NAND, and firmware. The only configuration difference between the drives is the amount of overprovisioning, with the P5600 drives using 20% overprovisioning to ensure faster performance, while the P5500 drives use just 4% overprovisioning to maximize capacity. Consequently, the P5620 is being pitched by the company as a mixed workload (mixed read/write) drive that can sustain up to 3 DWPD, while the P5520 is aimed at workloads with more reads than writes, with a 1 DWPD endurance.

Update: Solidigm has sent over revised write IOPS figures for the P5620; their initial figures were a typo

Given the difference in overprovisioning, the two D7 drives carry different write performance ratings. While both drives are rated for 4.2GB/second for large sequential writes, the much larger spare area on the P5620 means it's rated to sustain 390K 4K write IOPS, which is a 50% improvement over its predecessor. Though it is interesting to note that the best performing SKU, according to Solidigm's specs, is not the highest capacity 12.8TB model, but rather the 6.4TB model, which is where the quoted figures come from. The 12.8TB model actually rated for slightly lower sustained write performance and write IOPS.

As for write performance on the P5520, that drive brings that down to 220K 4K write IOPS. Though even that is a 16% improvement over the P5510.

Meanwhile read speeds are up slightly across the board, with both drives topping out at 1.1M read IOPS, or 7.1GB/second sequential.

We don’t have any additional information from the company on the controller used, however based on the specifications, at this juncture there’s nothing to indicate it’s significantly different from the existing Arbordale Plus controller. Though it sounds like Solidigm may be tweaking things in firmware slightly differently than Intel did, as Solidigm is focusing on read latency (especially reads under write pressure) more than Intel. In the case of the P5500 series, they’ve knocked 4K read latency down from 84μs to 75μs for the P5520; meanwhile write latency has seen a smaller drop, saving off 1μs to bring it down to 15μs.

The launch of the P5520 also marks the significantly overdue introduction of EDSFF form factors for some of the D7 series drives. Along with the classic U.2 form factor that the drives have used for the last few generations, the P5520 will also be available in the E1.L and E1.S form factors. The latter is new territory for Solidigm, as even in the company’s lower-ender/higher-density D5 product lineup, they’ve only used E1.L previously. The P5520 E1.S drives, in turn, will actually come in two sizes: E1.S 9.5mm and E1.S 15mm. Both will offer the same reduced capacities – 7.68TB max versus double that for U2/E1.L – however the 15mm drive will use that space for a heatsink that the 9.5mm drive lacks the room to fit. Otherwise, the P5620 remains unchanged, and will only come in the U.2 form factor.

Wrapping things up, according to Solidigm the drives are already in mass production, and are even deployed with some OEMs and cloud providers.

Gallery: Solidigm D7-P5620/P5520 Press Deck

Kioxia Announces XG8 Client SSDs: PCIe 4.0 and BiCS5 For OEMs

Kioxia this morning is rolling out its next-generation of full-size client SSDs, the XG8 family. Like its predecessors, the XG8 is aimed at the OEM market, for customers who are after a full M.2 2280-sized drive and are looking for better performance than the company’s more integrated and compact BG-series drives. Notable features for the latest-generation drive include a PCIe 4.0-capable controller, as well as capacities as high as 4TB.

And while we’d normally use the company’s previous-generation drive as a baseline to illustrate what’s new with the latest drive, today’s announcement of the XG8 is a bit weird, even by Kioxia’s own OEM-centric standards. The predecessor to the XG8 is the XG7, which was launched in November of 2020 with a very similar feature set: a PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 SSD with capacities up to 4TB. However, for reasons we’re still not entirely clear on, the XG7 only saw a very limited deployment among OEMs, to the point that Kioxia never even put together a proper product page for the part. As a result, the company is taking a mulligan of sorts and is starting fresh with the XG8, positioning it as the successor to the PCIe 3/BiCS4-based XG6.

Starting with the basics, the XG8 is a M.2 2280 form factor SSD with a PCIe 4.0 x4 connection. Kioxia is using their 5^th generation, 112-layer BiCS5 NAND, with capacities ranging from 512GB up to 4TB. That NAND is being paired with their own in-house controller, which offers NVMe 1.4 support as well as the option for the usual OEM-centric security features such as TCG Pyrite 2.01 and TCG Opal 2.01.

Kioxia classifies the drive as a high-end product – particularly in relation to the BG5 – though as this is again by OEM standards, it’s a bit up in the air by enthusiast standards. Unfortunately, Kioxia isn’t providing any hard performance figures in advance of today’s announcement, so we don’t even have on-paper numbers to go by. For the moment, Kioxia is primarily throwing around 2x the performance of the XG6, most of which I’d expect to come from the switch to PCIe 4.0 and the additional host-to-controller bandwidth that affords.

Based on the lack of specification information and the fact that so many figures line up with the absentee XG7, it’s not at all clear what sets the XG8 apart from its more recent sibling. Presumably something has changed, if only to avoid another misfire, but at this point we’d just be guessing. Though it is notable that this drive family appears to be doing away with the ‘P’ designation that Kioxia used for high capacity drives in previous generations (e.g. XG6-P), as there is no mention of that sub-family of drives this time around.

Finally, this is probably one of the last BiCS5 client drives we’ll see from Kioxia. The WD/Kioxia joint venture has been producing BiCS5 NAND since late 2020, and according to recent WD earnings calls, 162L BiCS6 is expected to go into mass production late this year.

In the meantime, the XG8 is now sampling to Kioxia’s customers, and should start showing up in OEM laptops and desktops soon.