FMS 2025: Sandisk Unveils UltraQLC Technology Platform with Up to 256TB Enterprise SSD Capacity

Sandisk Corp. demonstrated a high-capacity 256TB ⁽¹⁾ NVMe enterprise SSD, a breakthrough in storage capacity, performance and power efficiency, made possible by the company’s new enterprise-grade UltraQLC platform.

Offering extraordinary capacity, the UltraQLC platform marks a significant achievement in NAND architecture, built with a combination of BiCS8 QLC CBA NAND, custom controllers and advanced system optimizations.

As workloads and business requirements evolve in the AI era, flash storage must become more customizable to match complex workloads. The new 256TB ⁽¹⁾ NVMe SSD, built on the UltraQLC platform, is designed for AI-driven, data-intensive workloads like data ingest, preparation, and fast AI data lakes with high-performance speeds and power efficiency, while improving TCO for high-capacity applications in hyperscale cloud.

“As we move into the next phase of the AI era, flash storage is becoming a critical enabler of intelligent, high-performance workloads,” said Khurram Ismail, CPO, Sandisk. “Our UltraQLC platform is the culmination of years of work and learnings to build a flexible and robust architecture that achieves extraordinary capacities and maximum performance while maintaining efficiency. This enables us to further expand our portfolio to meet AI demands at scale and helps our customers move faster, process more and turn data into real innovation.”

The firm’s UltraQLC 256TB ⁽¹⁾ NVMe SSD sets a new benchmark for hyperscale flash storage, purpose-built for the fast, intelligent data lakes powering AI at scale. With lower latency, higher bandwidth, and greater reliability, it delivers the performance needed for today’s most demanding AI workloads.

Key innovations include:

Direct Write QLC, which eliminates SLC buffering by enabling power-loss safe writes on the first pass
BiCS8 2Tb QLC die that doubles storage density while maintaining compact die sizes
UltraQLC power optimization, which uses Dynamic Frequency Scaling for up to 10% higher performance for a given power level ⁽²⁾ (projected)
Scalable multi-core controller that helps ensure high throughput and endurance at extreme capacities
Data Retention (DR) profile that reduces DR recycles by up to 33% ⁽³⁾(projected), improving drive reliability, resilience and continuous access to data while decreasing power consumption

SN670 Series SSD

Sandisk Sn670 Ssd 1

The company’s SN670 128TB ⁽¹⁾ NVMe SSD and UltraQLC 256TB ⁽¹⁾ NVMe SSD will be available in U.2 form factor in the first half of 2026, with additional form factors available later in the year.

SN670 Series SSD specs
Click to enlarge

Sandisk will host a keynote at FMS: the Future of Memory and Storage 2025, Santa Clara, CA, on Wednesday, August 6, at 11:40 AM PT, to highlight its UltraQLC platform and will demo its milestone 256TB ⁽¹⁾ NVMe SSD, alongside additional innovative storage solutions, at FMS Booth #607.

⁽¹⁾ 1TB = 1 trillion bytes. Actual user capacity may be less depending on operating environment. 
⁽²⁾ Source: Sandisk internal testing vs when Dynamic Frequency Scaling is disabled 
⁽³⁾ Source: Sandisk internal testing vs SANDISK SN655

Resource:
Blog: Inside UltraQLC: The Enterprise SSD Platform Engineered for AI

Comments

Following the official announcement from Kioxia and Micron plus SK hynix and Samsung showing on their booth their high capacity SSDs, Sandisk joins the pack with its UltraQLC model delivering a 256TB NVMe SSD in various form factors. Of course, this news doesn't hide the 122 or 128TB capacity the SN670 offers as well. We notice that the press release and the spec sheet above show different capacity numbers.

This capacity race is one of the battle vendors play in with others around density, performance of course and reliability, endurance, energy consumption, connectivity with PCIe Gen 6 and 7 and obviously SSD controllers capabilities.

And this capacity development axis will continue of course with 512TB and 1PB in the coming years meaning that we'll have in our palm 1PB, which is amazing. It immediately translates in 1U rack format capacity and full rack.

This year marks the return of Sandisk as an independent company at FMS with a big booth, full red, showing their active development in the domain.

Sandisk representatives at the booth confirm that the 256TB U.2 model should appear on the market around July next year, just before FMS 2026. The 128TB (or 122.88TB?) should be out in a few weeks now.

These high capacity SSD news from several vendors represent one of the biggest attractions during the show, it captures lots of attention, no doubt.