In its latest financial report, SanDisk announced two new SSD platforms. They don’t have official names yet, but the manufacturer says the NVMe drives built on them will offer an excellent balance of performance, energy efficiency, and cost. Both platforms will use Western Digital’s latest 3D BiCS8 NAND flash memory chips.
Image source: SanDisk
One of SanDisk’s new SSD platforms supports the PCIe 5.0 interface and promises sequential read and write speeds of up to 14,500 and 14,000 MB/s, respectively, in 2 TB drive versions. At the same time, the new product will provide such speeds with a power consumption of only 7 watts. Such low power consumption is at the level of PCIe 4.0 models. PCIe 5.0 drives of the same capacity most often consume up to 10 watts or more during peak loads.
SanDisk itself did not disclose which memory controller is used in the new products, but according to Tom’s Hardware, it is Silicon Motion SM2508. This SSD platform is based on 3D TLC NAND flash memory chips. The capacity of drives based on it will vary from 512 GB to 4 TB. Their launch is expected in the second quarter of 2025.
SanDisk also introduced a new SSD platform based on 3D QLC NAND flash memory with support for the PCIe 4.0 interface. It will be used to produce NVMe drives with a capacity of 512 GB to 2 TB. One of the first solutions based on this platform will be the Western Digital PC SN5100S. According to SanDisk, the new product will provide up to 53% higher sequential read speed and up to 44% higher sequential write speed compared to its predecessor, the SN5000S.
The company plans to accelerate the expansion of SSD production based on QLC NAND flash memory. By 2028, the manufacturer expects to produce 75% of its solutions based on this flash memory. In the same time frame, SanDisk plans to completely abandon PCIe 4.0 drives in favor of PCIe 5.0 models.