The price of the world’s largest SSD has nearly doubled since launch – could extreme demand for AI servers and training be behind the shocking price tag of Solidigm’s 61.44TB SSD?
When the 61.44 TB Solidigm SSD went on pre-sale in January 2024, I noticed that the world’s largest SSD was much cheaper than expected and offered a price per terabyte that was much lower than smaller 8 TB SSDs. If you pre-ordered the Solidigm drive from PC nationit would have made you $3,975.16, while Tech America offered it for $3,692.00. Not exactly change, but reasonable considering the enormous capacity.
Fast forward to today, and things have taken a turn for the worse. Now that it is readily available, the price has skyrocketed. Bee Tech America it is up more than 95% to $7,204.
Do you want to shop? We don’t blame you. You can still save by ordering from Wired zonewhere it costs $7,132, $72 cheaper. Notice we didn’t say it was a big saving. Of course, there are bigger discounts to be had if you buy in bulk, but for a single ride that’s quite a price increase.
Is it worth it?
Solidigm’s SSD is ideal for AI servers, and the demand is clearly there, but that’s still a big jump. So, what exactly do you get for your money?
The 61.44 TB Solidigm SSD is housed in a U.2 15mm form factor (you can also get it in the E1.S form) and uses a PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe interface, combined with advanced 192-layer QLC 3D NAND. It achieves up to 1,005,000 IOPS for 4K random reads and 42,600 IOPS for 16K random writes, making it perfect for data-heavy applications. With a read latency of just 8 microseconds and a sequential write latency of 15 microseconds, it provides fast data access and processing speeds.
Considering you’re paying over $7,000 for the SSD, you’ll be happy to know that it’s rated for 0.5 disk writes per day (DWPD) and a mean time between failures (MTBF) of 2 million hours, ensuring you get a long service life. term reliability.
Power consumption is 24W in active use and 5W in idle, making it energy efficient for its size. Plus, it’s built to withstand tough conditions, withstanding up to 2.17 GRMS of vibration and 1,000 G of shock, while operating comfortably between 0 and 70°C.