Western Digital introduced a 128 TB SSD for AI systems

Western Digital recently announced it was testing its 64TB SSD for data centers, and today at FMS 2024 the company unveiled its next-generation 128TB SSD. The SSD uses Kioxia’s BiCS8 QLC NAND memory and is designed primarily for “fast AI data and high-performance applications.”

Image source: anandtech.com

The demo SSD received firmware optimized for AI checkpointing, a workload that involves sequential writes but also requires the drive to maintain a minimum service level for simultaneous reads. Judging by the photo from the exhibition, the sequential write speed with this workload reaches 6.32 GB/s, and the simultaneous sequential read speed is 3.13 GB/s. Western Digital has not yet announced other characteristics of the new product, but judging by the exhibition sample, the drive will be produced in U.2 and U.3 form factors.

The 218-layer BiCS8 memory uses a hybrid CMOS directly bonded to Array (CBA) design. This technology is the evolutionary successor to Micron’s CMOS-under-Array (CuA) and SK hynix’s Periphery-under-Cell (4D PUC) technologies. BiCS8 NAND can interface with the controller at speeds of up to 3600 MT/s, making it suitable for use in Gen 4+ generation drives.

Western Digital is not the only company that has developed a high-performance SSD with a capacity of 128 TB. Samsung recently announced that it has technology to create 120 TB solid-state drives. Solidigm demonstrated a prototype SSD QLC with a capacity of 122 TB at the FMS 2024 exhibition.

AI workloads have become a new challenge for enterprise SSD vendors and an incentive to deliver energy-efficient, high-capacity, high-density SSDs in the data center.