World's first 8TB SD card, 16TB SSD are here
Western Digital (WD), the parent company of SanDisk, has unveiled the world's first 8TB SD card and a 16TB external SSD. The announcement was made at the Future Memory and Storage Conference (FMS2024), a prominent flash memory conference and exhibition event. While no specific release date or price has been confirmed for the high-capacity consumer SD card and SSD, they are anticipated to carry a significant price tag due to their advanced features and capacities.
New products and their capabilities
The new products from WD include the world's first SanDisk 4TB microSDUC UHS-I card and an even larger SDUC UHS-I SD card with an 8TB capacity. These cards are designed to reach a maximum speed of 100MB/s, making them suitable for use in smartphones, gaming devices, drones, cameras, and laptops. Additionally, the company's first-ever 16TB version of the SanDisk Desk Drive is twice the current largest external SSD. A portable version of this drive is also under development.
BiCS8 performance and PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs
In addition to portable storage solutions, WD has demonstrated BiCS8 performance and mainstream PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs at FMS2024. These demonstrations involve the use of AI-driven PCs, gaming rigs, workstations, laptops among others. The data center market is another significant focus for the company as it introduces a 128TB high-capacity QLC eSSD, that uses its 8th-generation NAND, designed for fast AI data lakes and capacity-intensive performance applications.
World's first 32TB ePMR SMR HDD
WD has also introduced the world's first 32TB ePMR SMR HDD for large-scale data storage and a new 64TB eSSD for storage-intensive applications. The company showcased a novel RapidFlex interposer that can convert PCIe SSD signals to Ethernet. This innovation allows PCIe eSSDs to be deployed in either an Ethernet-switched or a PCIe-switched system architecture, like the OpenFlex Data24 4200 NVMe-oF storage platform.
