SK hynix’s announcement of its 321-layer 3D NAND in QLC format has raised questions about Solidigm’s role in the organization.
Solidigm was a pioneer in high-capacity SSDs for enterprise use with its 61.44 TB QLC drive in July 2023 and a 122 TB drive in November 2024, both of which used 192-layer QLC 3D NAND. This NAND technology was introduced in mid-2022. Since then, other NAND suppliers have surpassed 200 layers, leaving Solidigm lagging. SK hynix introduced 238 layers in mid-2023 and is now talking about 321-layer product and ultra-high-capacity SSDs following Sandisk and Kioxia 256 TB SSD announcements.
This raises several questions:
- What is the role of Solidigm in the SK hynix organization if SK hynix now leads with ultra-high-capacity SSDs?
- Will Solidigm enter the 200-plus and even the 300-plus layer count area?
- Will Solidigm adopt SK hynix NAND technology or continue to develop its own technology?
- Is PLC flash a dead end or will we see product arrive?
- How will Solidigm cope with its fabs in Dalian, China, being in the wrong geography from US President Donald Trump’s point of view, and attracting tariffs on the product it manufactures?
Blocks & Files spoke to Roger Corell, Solidigm’s senior director of AI and leadership marketing, who indicated that Solidigm is not being sidelined within SK hynix.
“We are undergoing an AI-fueled business momentum or business growth phase here,” he said. “And we’d like to think that, owing to some efforts from Solidigm, that storage is increasingly a part of that discussion.”
“I think if we just went back maybe two years ago or so, or maybe even more recently, storage really wasn’t part of that discussion. And now that we’re in this era of every watt, every square inch counting, maximizing your critical investments in GPUs, maximizing your GPU utilization, is essential, that storage is… increasingly part of the conversation on what does it take to efficiently scale critical AI infrastructure.”
“We are in the era where every watt and every square inch counts. Somebody might get approval for a 500 megawatt datacenter, which sounds great, but boy, they’re going to want to maximize, optimize their investment within their power and space budget. And as we get into this exabyte-class era, the storage impact on this every watt and every square inch matters moment becomes even more important in terms of optimizing your critical resources. And then I think the last thing is, so we talked about one thing, exabyte class storage, every watt and square inch counts. And I think the third area is, and we’ve alluded to this, is don’t have storage be the bottleneck, right? You’ve got to maximize your compute investments optimization. So if you look at these factors, if you will, on why we think storage is meeting this AI moment and then we reflect back on Solidigm’s portfolio, we think we’re really, really well positioned.”
He said Solidigm has “deep industry engagements across multiple segments, we have design wins, we have AI design wins with fastest growing neo-clouds, hyperscalers leading storage, OEMs leading storage box providers. As you know, we are validated with being on the Nvidia RVL list where their latest E1.S product for direct attached storage. So we think that… our portfolio is meeting this AI storage moment.”
Blocks & Files: From my perspective, I’m seeing Solidigm having a layer count for its SSDs that is lagging behind SK hynix. So my understanding is you are on 192 layers at the moment and SK hynix is on 238 with 321 being developed.
Roger Corell: I think there’s multiple angles I want to approach that from. Layer count is important and, yes, you’re absolutely right. We are at 192. We are working on developing our next generation now, which will push us beyond 2XX.
It’s so much more than layer count, OK? It’s layer count, it’s bits per cell, it is cell size and, as a result of cell size, how densely you can pack those cells. So you can almost think of layer count as vertical scaling. You can think of cell size and the density on packing those cells as linear scaling.
We talked about bits per cell. Let me dive into that a little bit. OK, QLC ain’t easy, right? We are on our fourth generation. We started shipping in 2018, as you know. We have shipped over 120 exabytes. Why don’t you think anybody else has shipped in-volume QLC? Because it’s really, really hard. So we have a lot of experience here.
But then you also get into component integration, component optimization. I’m not going to get into a lot of details here, but we’ve done things to significantly reduce the size of our PLI (Power Loss Imminent) [and] significantly reduce the size of our controller. That frees up more NAND die placement spaces on a given board. And then packaging also factors into it. We have the smallest NAND package in the industry.
When you factor in all the above, that’s why we were first to 61.44. That’s why we’re first to 122.88. That’s why we have strong confidence we’ll be the first to 245. We anticipate shipping 245 by the end of 2026.
We have confidence in where we are now and where we are investing in moving forward in sustaining our high-cap leadership.
Blocks & Files: Will the 245 TB drive use the existing 192 layers?
Roger Corell: No. It will push into the 200-layer count.
Blocks & Files: And will these chips be made in your Dalian fabs?
Roger Corell: Yes, they will.
Blocks & Files: I would understand from what you’ve said that this will be Solidigm technology. You’re not going to be adopting SK hynix technology.
Roger Corell: This will be a yes. This will be on floating gate technology, but as long as you’ve brought up technology, let’s talk about that. As you know, we have two technologies in our portfolio. We have floating gate and we have charge trap, and we believe that that is a critical advantage for Solidigm, a unique technology portfolio advantage. Charge trap is really good at certain things that maybe are best aligned with a category of workloads. And floating gate is really good at certain things that are well aligned with the needs of certain [other] workloads. And it’s this combined technology portfolio access that maps us to why our AI portfolio is meeting the moment.
We’ve got our [charge trap-based] PS1010 for direct-attached storage, which has amazing performance but also leads in terms of cooling efficiency. And then we’ve got the floating gate-enabled high capacity portfolio, again, 61.44, 122 TB shipping, 245 TB by the end of 2026… OK, in terms of AI, you’ve got storage for direct-attached storage (DAS) and you’ve got storage for network-attached storage (NAS). And we believe we have a leadership product in both of these key storage infrastructure areas for AI.
Blocks & Files: Do you think you’ll stick with QLC and that PLC is not going to be realistic for quite a few years?
Roger Corell: Interesting question… We demonstrated a working PLC SSD at FMS in August of 2022, so we think there will be a future for PLC. When? Tough to say, but I think the market is moving in a direction where eventually PLC will have its place in our SSD portfolio. We are evaluating it.
Blocks & Files: Will Solidigm consider bringing out a very high-speed access SSD, like the Kioxia near-storage-class memory FL6?
Roger Corell: We do have an SLC device in the market right now, the P5810. Our company aspiration is we are a strong number two in [the] enterprise SSD business right now. We have aspirations to be number one. We listen to our customers. If our customers are telling us that they need that product, then we’re going to give it a hard look. Yes, it’s a super compelling product and, if we see a need for it, we will look into a strategy to enable it.
Comment
Solidigm will move beyond 192-layer 3D NAND into the 200-plus layer count area, and have a 245 TB-class SSD out by the end of 2026 using its own technology, with the NAND manufactured in Dalian.
Bootnote
SSDs with PLI technology contain energy-storing capacitors that can act as a backup in the event of a power failure. With PLI, SSDs detect a power outage as soon as it occurs and write in-flight data in the NAND to prevent data loss.
