SK hynix this week reported its financial results for the second quarter, as well as offering a glimpse at its plans for the coming quarters. Notably among the company's plans for the year is the release of a SK hynix-branded 60 TB SSD, which will mark the firm's entry into the ultra-premium enterprise SSD league.

"SK hynix plans to expand sales of high-capacity eSSD and lead the market in the second half with 60TB products, expecting eSSD sales to be more than quadrupled compared to last year," a statement by SK hynix reads.

Currently there are only two standard form-factor 61.44 TB SSDs on the market: the Solidigm D5-P5336 (U.2/15mm and E1.L), and the Samsung BM1743 (U.2/15mm and E3.S). Both are built from a proprietary controller (Solidigm's controller still carries an Intel logotype) with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and use QLC NAND for storage.

SK hynix's brief mention of the drive means that tere aren't any formal specifications or capabilities to discuss just yet. But it is reasonable to assume that the company will use its own QLC memory for their ultra-high-capacity drives. What's more intriguing are which controller the company plans to use and how it is going to position its 60 TB-class SSD.

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Internally, SK hynix has access to multiple controller teams, both of which have the expertise to develop an enterprise-grade controller suitable for a 60 TB drive. SK hynix technically owns Solidigm, the former Intel SSD and NAND unit, giving SK hynix the option of using Solidigm's controller, or even reselling a rebadged D5-P5336 outright. Alternatively, SK hynix has their own (original) internal SSD team, who is responsible for building their well-received Aries SSD controller, among other works.

Ultra-high-capacity SSDs for performance demanding read-intensive storage applications, such as AI inference on the edge or content delivery networks, is a promising premium market. So SK hynix is finding itself highly incentivized to enter it with a compelling offering. 

Source: SK hynix

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  • thestryker - Thursday, July 25, 2024 - link

    I thought it has been interesting that after buying Intel's SSD business and making a new company, Solidigm, SK Hynix has continued to release parts that are mechanically identical.
  • Samus - Friday, July 26, 2024 - link

    I suspect it’s a smart move having two separate teams at each division work on overlapping products.
  • SanX - Sunday, July 28, 2024 - link

    Even "smarter" move was to switch to QLC instead of at least TLC (the latter has also not that super-duper endurance). With QLC you get negligibly (30%) larger capacity at the price of 10x smaller life span ;)
  • FunBunny2 - Monday, July 29, 2024 - link

    as Dr. McElhone was fond of saying: "the world is not linear". and, it really isn't. just as anyone around when Covid-19 went through the global population.
  • mode_13h - Sunday, July 28, 2024 - link

    Yeah, I had assumed the use of SK Hynix branding would fade away and they'd have just one set of Solidigm product lines. This is puzzling, especially after last year's financial pressures surely forcing some painful cuts and consolidation.
  • deil - Tuesday, July 30, 2024 - link

    Its good to see, we need more of those, but progress seems lackluster. Unless that will be SERIOUS VOLUME, not just for CD, but most of the cloud.
    anyone knows what aws have underneath their ec2 as standard?
    those are rookie numbers, guys. We need MOAR.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - link

    QLC

    Hard pass. Ill stick to Kioxia TLC drives.

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