ExaScale Rack New Iteration Following SC25

Following FMS, MSST, OCP and now SC conference, we decided to update our list of examples approaches that illustrate the market towards ExaScale rack.

It’s important to consider PCIe Gen 5 and not only Gen 4 as it was implicit in our previous schemas. Also as E3.S and .L appear to be one of the key developments, these form factors seem to have strong traction and fit perfectly in 2U chassis. E.2 form factor presents some interests as well, and of course as we speak about capacity SSD, it is obviously associated with QLC Flash technology.

Considering 122TB SSD with PCI Gen 5, several vendors offer such capacity today in E3.S or .L like Huawei with the AI SSD, Kioxia with LC9 Series, Micron with the ION6600, Phison with the D205V, Sandisk with the SN670 or Solidigm with D5-P5336 but with PCIe Gen 4. But surprisingly, SK-hynix is today limited to 61TB in E3.S form factor.

With 32 x 122TB SSD in 2U, it delivers in a full rack 20 x 32 x 122TB = 78PB or 156PB with 245TB SSD in 40U rack.

Many of them have unveiled 245TB SSDs such as Huawei, Kioxia, Micron or Sandisk. Other vendors don’t seem to have this kind of large capacity SSDs yet. There is also some other form factors such the flash 300TB DFM developed and promoted by Pure Storage.

Other players mentioned such as XSight Labs or Novodisq needs more integration and validation and we wait official announcements at least prototypes or early versions.

This large capacity SSD trajectory confirms some interest for DPU and at the same time, some players also started to promote PCIe Gen 6 with new controllers and don’t forget the dual port capability.

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