Western Digital (WD) announced a raft of interesting new storage solutions at the ongoing Future of Memory and Storage Conference (FMS 2024). The products are intended to drive storage forward in the data center, client, automotive, and consumer segments. Three particular announcements caught our eye: a BiCS8 flash 128TB high-capacity QLC enterprise SSD (eSSD), new SD cards in 8TB capacities, and a 16TB external SSD for consumers.
Looking at the 128TB eSSD first, this very high capacity drive will be demonstrated at FMS 2024, presumably at WD's Booth 607 at the Santa Clara venue. As you'd expect in the current data center climate, this device is marketed as being of great benefit for the data demands of AI, ML, and LLMs. WD says that the new 128TB drive uses its eighth gen BiCS8 NAND and that its capacity relies on the use of QLC (four bits per cell) technology. According to WD, the new 128TB SSD is particularly useful for handling "fast AI data lakes and capacity-intensive performance applications."
Other data center storage innovations that will be highlighted by WD at FMS 2024 include "the world’s first 32TB ePMR SMR HDD" for massive data storage at scale, as well as a new 64TB eSSD for storage-intensive applications. Furthermore, a new RapidFlex interposer, which converts PCIe SSD signals to Ethernet, will be on show and demonstrated in the OpenFlex Data24 4200 NVMe-oF storage platform.
