SK Hynix Develops New High-Capacity SSD 'PS1012' for AI Data Centers

61TB QLC-Based Product... Expanding NAND Portfolio
"Strengthening SSD Business Synergy with Solidigm"

SK Hynix has introduced a high-capacity NAND flash product with a 61-terabyte (TB) capacity applying Quad-Level Cell (QLC) technology. QLC NAND is a high-capacity NAND production technology that stores 4 bits per cell. As the amount of information stored increases, more data can be stored in the same area.

High-capacity solid-state drive (SSD) 'PS1012 U.2' for artificial intelligence (AI) data centers developed by SK Hynix. Photo by SK Hynix

On the 18th, SK Hynix announced that it has developed a new high-capacity solid-state drive (SSD) product for artificial intelligence (AI) data centers called 'PS1012 U.2'. With the development of this new product, SK Hynix has expanded its NAND product portfolio, enabling it to maximize synergy with its subsidiary Solidigm and its enterprise SSD (eSSD) solution business.

NAND is classified into five standards depending on how many pieces of information (in bits) are stored in a single cell. SK Hynix explained, "As the AI era is in full swing, demand for high-performance enterprise SSDs (eSSD) is rapidly increasing, and QLC technology, which implements this in high capacity, is becoming the industry standard. We have developed a 61TB product applying QLC technology and are introducing it to the market."

The new product applies the latest interface, PCIe 5th generation (Gen5). PCIe is a serial high-speed input/output interface used on the mainboards of digital devices. Compared to PCIe 4th generation-based products, the bandwidth has doubled, increasing data transfer speed to 32GT (giga-transfers) per second. This means 32 operations or pieces of information are transferred per second. Sequential read performance is twice that of the previous standard product, at 13GB (gigabytes) per second.

SK Hynix plans to supply samples of the new product to global server manufacturers within this year for product evaluation and expand the product lineup to 122TB by the third quarter of next year. To overcome the capacity limits of eSSD, SK Hynix is also developing a world’s highest-layer 321-layer 4D NAND-based 244TB product, which was developed last month.

Hyun Ahn, Chief Development Officer (CDO) of SK Hynix, said, "We will build a growth foundation to become a full-stack AI memory supplier by meeting the diverse demands of AI data center customers in the future."