Solidigm, a subsidiary of South Korean memory giant SK hynix, announced the release of a new enterprise solid-state drive (SSD) with an industry-leading 122-terabyte capacity designed for AI data centers, noting that the new product doubles the storage capacity of its predecessor, which offered 61.44TB.

According to the reports by Business Korea and the Korea Herald, the NAND flash memory solution provider is collaborating with global clients on certification for the new eSSD, named D5-P5336, with sales expected to begin in the first quarter of next year.

It is worth noting that in 2018, chip giant Intel released the SSD 660p, the world’s first storage device based on QLC, or quad-level-cell, NAND. Solidigm emerged from the sale of Intel’s storage group to SK hynix in 2021, and continued to build on this QLC technology, allowing it to store four times the data of standard eSSDs, according to Solidigm.

Solidigm claimed that it was the first chip company to commercialize QLC-based high-capacity SSDs, having delivered over 100 exabytes of these products since 2018, according to the reports. An exabyte equals 1 billion gigabytes, or roughly 1 million TB.

In addition, the company stated that this new eSSD solution is purpose-built to handle the high data demands of AI workloads and is engineered for unlimited random writes over a five-year period, according to the reports.

In detail, Solidigm explained that customers incorporating the product into their network-attached storage can reduce storage footprint by 25% and cut power consumption by up to 84% compared to mixed HDD and SSD setups, the reports noted.

Moreover, in space-limited edge servers, the new product can reportedly store four times more data within the same area as the commonly used 30TB TLC-based SSDs, while also achieving a 3.4% improvement in power density per terabyte.

As Data center designers are focusing on enhancing energy and space efficiency as AI applications rapidly expand, Solidigm expects its new product to be a game changer, as it directly address the key challenges faced by customers, according to Greg Matson, Solidigm’s senior vice president of strategic planning and marketing, cited by the reports.

According to the reports, Travis Vigil, senior vice president of Portfolio and Product Management at Dell Technologies, added that Solidigm’s eSSD optimizes energy use and spatial efficiency. As Dell works to increase data center density with its own solutions, it is also excited about continued advancements in storage, including Solidigm’s latest release.

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(Photo credit: Solidigm)