At the recent investor day event,SanDisk announced its plan to develop solid-state drives with capacities up to petabytes, but unfortunately the roadmap did not announce a specific time.This goal will be achieved through its UltraQLC technology. UltraQLC is not a new type of memory, but a combination of SanDisk's own BICS8QLC3DNAND, a high-end dedicated controller (supporting 64 NAND channels) and firmware.
At the heart of the platform is its custom controller, which incorporates specialized hardware accelerators to offload critical storage tasks from firmware, resulting in lower latency, higher bandwidth, and enhanced reliability in hyperscale storage environments.
In addition, the controller automatically adjusts power consumption based on workload to ensure optimal energy efficiency.
UltraQLC solid-state drives will use 2TbNAND memory ICs to achieve a storage capacity of 128TB. Although a 64-channel controller can theoretically support higher capacities, doing so will affect performance.
Going forward, SanDisk expects to develop higher-capacity NAND devices, which will expand SSD capacity to 256TB, 512TB, and reach the 1PB target in the next few years.
SanDisk's head of engineering and product management said: "UltraQLC is a technology built specifically for modern data infrastructure based on our decades of experience and current learning, without compromising on density, performance or energy efficiency."