Feed: AnandTech
Feed Link: https://www.anandtech.com
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Title: Western Digital Teases 128 TB Enterprise SSD: BiCS8 3D QLC for AI
Workloads

Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2024 11:00:00 EDT
Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21505/western-...

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.

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