- ‘Sandisk 2.0’ aiming for higher investor returns, faster, higher capacity SSDs
- 128TB Data Center UltraQLC SSD launching later this year
- Sandisk plans 256TB SSD next year, and a 1PB model in the near future
Western Digital announced plans to separate its HDD and flash businesses back in 2023 and began the process in October 2024.
Going forward, WD will focus on the hard drive and platforms side, while Sandisk will concentrate on flash technology products, including SSDs, memory cards, and USB flash drives.
Sandisk recently held an investor day session titled “Sandisk 2.0” to emphasize this brand new iteration of the business. The company explained it is focused on generating higher returns and improving margins for investors, in an obvious attempt to quell any concern that might be brewing following its spinoff.
More excitingly, Sandisk also took the opportunity to reveal details of a new, large capacity SSD arriving later in 2025.
1PB SSD incoming
The UltraQLC DC SN670 is an NVMe PCIe Gen 5 QLC Data Center SSD that promises 68% faster read speeds and 55% faster write speeds “compared to the competition”. This will be Sandisk’s first 128TB SSD (with 122.88TB usable capacity), following similar drives from Solidigm, Samsung, and Phison. This, along with a 64TB model (61.44TB usable), is expected to debut in Q3 2025.
Blocks and Files notes, “The UltraQLC angle refers to the controller having hardware accelerators, being scalable to the 64 Die/Channel level, able to scale power according to workload demand and including an ‘integrated advanced toggle mode bus Mux control.’ Toggle mode NAND uses a double data rate interface for faster data transfers and a multiplexer (Mux) manages the data lanes. Sandisk’s version of this technology will be managing the NAND-SSD controller data flow more efficiently.”
Although it didn’t provide an exact timeline, Sandisk also teased it is working toward a 1PB data center drive, possibly within the next four years. It did confirm a target of 256TB in 2026 and 512TB in 2027, however.
While Sandisk typically uses TLC NAND for its performance SSDs, and QLC NAND for capacity drives, the firm will be shifting towards QLC for most purposes by 2028 (Sandisk teased BiCS9 with more than 300 layers which will be used to make a 1Tb TLC die).
Later this year will see the arrival of a value PCIe Gen 4 QLC NAND drive in 512GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities, and also a PCIe Gen 5 TLC drive in 512GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities.
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waynewilliams@onmail.com (Wayne Williams)
