Exclusive: The first 128TB SSDs will be launched in the coming months – and yes, this little-known rival will challenge Samsung, Solidigm and Kioxia for the storage crown
Businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to back up and manage the growing amounts of data they produce. The introduction of generative AI has further complicated matters, significantly challenging traditional storage methods.
128TB SSDs have been teased for a while now, with a number of companies discussing their future plans. For example, Huawei has announced that it is working on a 128TB SSD, but that product will only be available as part of its Exabyte-compatible OceanStor A800 range and isn’t expected to hit the market until 2025.
At CES 2024, Phison showcased a variety of SSDs and portable SSD controllers, including the X2 enterprise SSD platform. While the capacity for this “world’s best Enterprise SSD” came in at 61.44 TB, the version shown at CES suggested a future capacity of up to 128 TB.
128TB coming “soon”
Phison revealed a little more of its plans in late May 2024 when it took the wraps off its Pascari X200 PCIe Gen5 Enterprise SSD range.
These drives feature the CoXProcessor CPU architecture and are specifically designed for high-performance computing (HPC) AI, hyperscale, and data centers. While the first models were only available in sizes up to 32TB, we now know that there are significantly larger models on the market. way, and will arrive earlier than expected.
In a casual chat with a Pascari representative, we were told that the brand plans to launch 64TB and 128TB X200 models “in the coming months.” While they couldn’t tell us much more for obvious reasons, we expect an official announcement about Pascari’s 128TB X200 during (if not before) this year’s Flash Memory Storage (FMS) event held at the Santa Clara Convention Center, on August 6. -8.
Pascari’s rep told us to “expect some PCIe Gen6 stuff at FMS” and hinted that current speeds will also change.