Flash storage company Pure Storage has announced plans to develop a proprietary 300TB DFM (Direct Flash Module) SSD by 2026. The manufacturer believes that a significant development in the production of 3D NAND flash memory will lead to an increase in the density of these microcircuits and will open the possibility of creating SSDs in a similar volume.
Image source: Pure Storage
“In the next few years we want to significantly increase the competitiveness of our drives. Today we supply drives in DFM format with a capacity of 24 and 48 TB. At the next Accelerate conference we should expect announcements on the development of 300TB drives by 2026.”– said Alex McMullan, CTO of Pure Storage, in an interview with Blocks & Files.
The DirectFlash module’s proprietary Pure Storage drives are used solely as part of the storage FlashArray And lightning blade the manufacturer himself. DFM drives are vaguely reminiscent of the SSD format ruler form factor, which are mainly used as part of servers and allow you to have very high data storage density. The appearance of the Ruler Form Factor drives resembles a ruler (Ruler – English “Ruler”). DFM connects via a standard U.2 NVMe interface. Such drives are equipped with special memory controllers, 3D TLC and 3D QLC NAND flash memory chips, as well as special software.
The manufacturer has not yet announced how Pure Storage intends to increase the capacity of its drives sixfold. However, there are several directions, the development of which will help solve this problem. The most obvious is the development of more advanced 3D NAND flash memory chips. Flash memory chips consisting of 112-160 layers are widely used today. In the next five years, the development of chips with 400 to 500 layers is predicted, notes Pure Storage.
“All flash memory chip manufacturers plan to start producing chips with 400 to 500 layers in the next five years. And this progress will certainly help us to reach our goal.”commented McMullan.
The transition to the production of a new generation of flash memory chips, i.e. chips with a large number of active layers, usually occurs every two years. This year, the production of flash memory chips with more than 200 layers is to be increased. By 2025 we can expect the release of 300-layer 3D NAND chips and by 2027 a transition to the production of 400-layer or more chips. However, the issue isn’t just the number of layers used in flash memory chips.
Existing DFM drive models can accommodate a limited number of 3D NAND flash memory chips. As a result, the company must either develop SSDs that can accommodate more chips, which also requires the use of new storage controllers, or increase the number of drives that are part of a single storage cluster.
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