SK hynix has matched its subsidiary Solidigm with a 60TB-class PS1012 SSD and says it will develop 122TB and 244TB follow-on drives to meet AI storage demand.
Ahn Hyun, President and Chief Development Officer at SK hynix, stated: “SK hynix and Solidigm are strengthening our QLC-based high-capacity SSD lineup to solidify our technological leadership in NAND solutions for AI.”
Solidigm introduced the then groundbreaking D5-P5336 61.44TB QLC (4bits/cell) SSD in July 2023. It proved to be an astute move and other vendors eventually followed suit with their own high-capacity QLC drives. Samsung was the first, a year later, with its BM1743. This outperformed the Solidigm drive as it used the PCIe gen 5 bus, twice as fast as the D5-P5336’s PCIe gen 4 bus.
November saw Micron bring out its own 61.44TB 6550 ION drive, also using the PCIe 5 bus. Solidigm stuck with the PCIe gen 4 bus and launched a doubled capacity D5-P5336 version at 122TB.
Phison matched that capacity with its 122.88TB capacity Pascari D205V and hooked it up with a PCIe gen 5 bus to beat the Solidigm drive’s performance. Now SK hynix, which uses a separate NAND fabrication process and plants from Solidigm, has previewed its own 61.44TB PS1012 drive, using the PCIe 5 bus, saying it’s ready for sampling.
The PS1012 supports the OCP 2.0 standard and is made in the traditional 2.5-inch U.2 format. SK hynix “plans to supply the sample of the new product to global server manufacturers within this year for product evaluation.” The company says it delivers up to 13GBps sequential read bandwidth.
A 122TB version is planned for the third calendar quarter of 2025. Both versions use, we understand, SK hynix’s 238-layer 3D NAND. Sk hynix says it will develop a 244TB drive using its latest 321-layer NAND process.
Hyun said: “In the future, we will lay the foundation for growth to become a full stack AI memory provider by meeting the diverse needs of AI data center customers based on our high competitiveness in the eSSD field.”
This announcement by SK hynix leaves Kioxia, which IPO’d today, Western Digital, and China’s YMTC outside the high-capacity SSD group. We expect all three to bring out 60TB+ drives in the future and to enter the 100TB+ drive category as well.
