Samsung has predicted that we can expect the capacity of a single SSD to reach as much as 1PB within the next decade, a prediction that came from the company exhibiting a prototype 128TB SSD at the Flash Memory Summit in San Jose in 2022 and this a “petabyte-scale product.”
Although Samsung has since launched a 128TB SSD with its own controller, and Silicon Motion has an SSD controller that can support up to 128TB, SSDs of that size remain disappointingly rare.
At CES 2024, Phison demonstrated a range of SSDs and portable SSD controllers, including the X2 enterprise SSD platform. The company’s site lists this as “the world’s best Enterprise SSD” available in capacities from 1.92TB to 61.44TB. However, something that very few people noticed was that the version shown at CES had a capacity of up to 128 TB.
I’m not shouting about it…yet!
While details are very scarce other than the information found on Phison’s media deck released prior to the show, we do know that highlights of the X2 controller (aside from its massive capacity) include:
- PCIe Gen5x4 dual port
- TSMC 12nm process
- 16 channels,
- 3D NAND
- Computational Storage Devices (CSD)
We also know that it will come in U.2 and E3.S form factors.
Phision also revealed that its device delivers the best performance per watt, boasting sequential read speeds of over 14 GB/s, sequential write speeds of 12 GB/s, random read speeds of 3000K IOPS, and random write speeds of 800K IOPS.
The lack of buzz makes it clear that Phison isn’t ready to shout about the updated they’re starting to become more common, even if 1PB drives remain a distant dream for now.