Sandisk's Stargate SSD architecture targets 512TB drives by 2027

[Alfonso Maruccia]

In context: Sandisk is developing a new architecture for high-capacity SSDs called Stargate. Sandisk CEO David Goeckeler described it as a "dynamite" project that will significantly advance enterprise storage, especially when paired with the company's BiCS 8 QLC NAND flash. He added that it's arriving sooner rather than later.

After several years as a subsidiary of Western Digital, Sandisk split from the parent company earlier this year. Former WD head David Goeckeler, now Sandisk CEO, has some ambitious projects in the works.

Goeckeler discussed Stargate's potential during a recent investor Q&A session. ComputerBase notes that the project involves a new controller architecture and ASIC design, though technical details remain scarce. However, Sandisk's current product roadmap reveals Stargate's likely role.

The roadmap unveiled during Sandisk's investor day includes a 128TB solid-state drive set for release this year, followed by a 256TB model in 2026 and a 512TB version in 2027. The ultimate goal is to deliver a 1PB storage unit, targeting the high-capacity demands of artificial intelligence ventures and Big Tech, which continue shifting their business toward chatbots. Hard drive manufacturers see the same opportunity, with Seagate planning a 100TB drive for 2030.

Stargate will power a new enterprise storage platform called "Ultra QLC" (also known as the DC SN670), with 64TB and 128TB models shipping in the third quarter. Customers can expect significant performance gains. Random read speeds will improve by 68 percent, random writes by 55 percent, and sequential read and write speeds will increase by 7 and 27 percent, respectively.

The new drives use the PCIe Gen5 bus, though Stargate could also leverage the newer PCIe 6.0 standard. Thanks to QLC memory, each storage unit will feature a 2TB capacity per chip. Tome's Hardware notes Stargate will scale up to 64 dies per channel, with the 512TB drive utilizing 32 channels.

Typical client SSDs offer up to eight channels, so complex storage management technologies like Stargate won't appear in consumer SSDs anytime soon. The technology will target the enterprise sector, which will remain a key focus for Sandisk.

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Sandisk's Stargate SSD architecture targets 512TB drives by 2027

 

[mbrowne5061]

While we're probably pretty far off from 512TB SSDs on the consumer side, yes, I do wonder how long it'll take for some of the gains to trickle over to your average SSD. It feels like NVMs drives have had a 2-4TB capacity cap on them for the last 3-4 years. I would have expected 'typical' NVMe drives to have at least gotten to 8-12TB by now.

 

[magoid]

Put me down for 2 of those puppies. It should be enough to install GTA 6.

 

[opckieran]

While we're probably pretty far off from 512TB SSDs on the consumer side, yes, I do wonder how long it'll take for some of the gains to trickle over to your average SSD. It feels like NVMs drives have had a 2-4TB capacity cap on them for the last 3-4 years. I would have expected 'typical' NVMe drives to have at least gotten to 8-12TB by now.

Separately from the challenges of shrinking nodes, we’ve run into a fundamental limit for how small we can make storage. You can actually see this on CPU dies, how we haven’t been able to shrink the footprint of the CPU cache for a very long time despite being able to continue to improve the SOC as a whole (and why we have separate 3D V-Cache in some cases).

Apart from that, you can double NAND layers every 3-5 years (which will probably run into its own limit soon and doesn’t have much of an impact on cost unfortunately), and even moving from QLC to PLC is going to be an immense challenge. These enterprise drives are gonna easily cost tens of thousands of dollars.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

QLC drives are already hot garbage with terrible write endurance and HDD performance levels once cache is filled. I can only imagine PLC drives are going to have warranties measured in days instead of years and hit FDD read/write speeds.

 

[brucek]

I notice the distinct lack of any pricing details. I suppose if you have to ask you can't afford it.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Well, there's the 100tb SSD for $40,000 you can buy now... I wonder what these will cost?

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Especially since traditional HDD companies are only "targeting" 100TB for the future...

 

[madboyv1]

Typical client SSDs offer up to eight channels, so complex storage management technologies like Stargate won't appear in consumer SSDs anytime soon.

Though that does mean 16TB per channel, 128TB for eight channels total... I'd think that'd be pretty nice to have if you are a data hoarder.

 

[candle86]

While we're probably pretty far off from 512TB SSDs on the consumer side, yes, I do wonder how long it'll take for some of the gains to trickle over to your average SSD. It feels like NVMs drives have had a 2-4TB capacity cap on them for the last 3-4 years. I would have expected 'typical' NVMe drives to have at least gotten to 8-12TB by now.

Well the other problem comes to do consumers need it your average consumer is still rocking a 512 to 1 TB drive even before hard drives were retired the standard option most people picked was either a 500 or 1 TB.

At the end of the day your average user doesn't even fill that space up there's not a need to Target the home market with larger sizes. The random enthusiast that wants really large drives is just kind of out of luck unless you want to buy enterprise-grade drives because there's zero incentive for them to make a consumer friendly version when the market is so small