Solidigm Introduces World’s Highest Capacity Drive: D5-P5336
We write a lot on TechArena about applications of technology to propel business, connect us in virtual communities, and propel humanity forward with scientific discovery and advancement.
The topic of the moment, of course, is artificial intelligence (AI) and how it’s vastly transforming how technology is serving as an increasingly valuable tool in productivity and insight. In all of these stories, there are a couple of foundational truths: everything reaped from the technology spectrum comes from processing and insight of data, and that data resides in infrastructure based on a silicon foundation.
This is why Solidigm’s gathering in Manhattan last night to introduce their latest QLC NAND feat – the delivery of the D5-P5336 – a first-of-its-kind 122 terabyte drive, is a foundational advancement for the broadest range of innovation. With its introduction, Solidigm maintains its QLC NAND leadership position that it first established with the quad bit per cell technology introduction in 2018. They recently passed 100EB of QLC NAND shipped, redefining what’s possible in data center-to-edge storage environments.
Before we delve deeper into the impact that it will have across markets, let’s unwrap the drive details. QLC NAND was developed for maximum storage density, storing 4 bits per NAND cell. This density also yields improved cost and energy efficiency but has some perceived tradeoffs in design, with lower write speed and endurance but notably higher read speeds.
Historic perception of QLC NAND has also questioned the durability of the drives. As the leader in QLC technology, Solidigm has been tackling these challenges focusing on delivering TLC performance with QLC technology. How have they done it? One thing that characterizes serious SSD innovation is whether a company is driving their own controller architecture, and Solidigm is serious about controller design as well as firmware engineering to drive up write performance. What has this resulted in within the D5-P5336 drive? Solidigm is claiming a 134.3 PBW rated endurance, which, in practical terms, promises 5 years of constant read and write without wearing out.
That’s an incredible achievement that opens the door for QLC NAND in a lot of new environments.
The new drive delivers 7,400 megabytes per second (MB/s) and comes in a variety of form factors including U.2 and E1.L, providing flexibility to systems designers for integrating into a variety of system configurations from edge to cloud. Notably, it sips power per TB, perfect for high-capacity data challenges where power savings is critical to free up needed watts for compute.
And then there’s, well, the ridiculous amount of capacity that this delivers. To put into perspective, you’d need about 500 drives to store IMDb’s 13 million movie catalog in HD. Four drives could store all of Spotify’s 100 million song titles. These examples put into context real use cases where large scale data pipelines are required. Let’s unpack a few offered from the Solidigm event:
PEAK AIO: Roger Cummings, CEO of PEAK AIO was on hand to share their vision for utilizing storage innovation to drive improved density in AI and HPC environments. PEAK AIO is driving solutions to the edge, carving a role for themselves with efficiency platform deployments. The market has responded well with a 4X growth of deployments within the last year. What markets are they targeting? Edge solutions can be found across verticals and applications as diverse as visual analytics, drones, MRI machines and more.
VAST Data: Renen Hallak, Founder and CEO of VAST Data, discussed how his team is driving a profound redefinition of data platform delivery for AI. Renen discussed a seven year history of collaboration with Solidigm to deliver innovation to customers and discussed how his data platforms, those covered broadly on TechArena, were to be found in the “biggest of the big” including QLC drives. The 122 TB drive, in Renen’s mind, presents the moment to move away from hard drives to a fully SSD era, accelerated by AI models.
CoreWeave: Jacob Yundt, Director of Compute Architecture at CoreWeave, was on hand to discuss how his team was building native cloud services for AI, and how his company is tapping QLC NAND to drive the scale of data that are required by his customers. The collaboration with Solidigm runs deep with Coreweave, as evidenced by the TechArena interview with Jacob from GTC earlier this year. Jacob claimed that “what we’re doing wouldn’t be possible without these high-capacity drives because our customers say ‘I need all of it’ and we’re constantly seeking more storage.”
Arm: Chloe Jian Ma, VP China GTM and IoT Line of Business at Arm, discussed how data center and cloud infrastructure require increased efficiency starting with Arm processors and extending to efficient storage deployment. Chloe discussed how hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, are seeking these platforms to drive the energy savings to free up energy to fuel their AI training.
Ocient: Sophie Kane, Director of Growth Marketing at Ocient, discussed always-on compute intensive workload management bringing compute and storage closer together and delivering 50-90% improved compute and storage deployment efficiency. Sophie emphasized the close collaboration with Solidigm hardware and Ocient software to deliver infrastructure sustainability and more acutely energy efficiency. Ocient solutions are targeted to a variety of verticals driving analytics solutions deep into the enterprise.
So what should we make of the drive introduction? SSD demand has been on a tear with the rise of AI in the data center, and we do not see this adoption curve slowing down as enterprises seek to implement generative AI at scale in their edge-to-cloud environments in 2025. Getting the likes of VAST Data and CoreWeave to show up for an SSD introduction underscores the importance of this foundational silicon innovation to the big things these companies are doing in the AI arena. It also showcases Solidigm’s unique savvy operating in the data center arena and understanding “up the stack” requirements that transforms them from procurement engagement to strategic technology collaborator.
The work the Solidigm team has delivered within controller and firmware development highlights their tech prowess that puts them atop drive considerations for these markets. I expect the 122 TB capacity to get a lot of attention from the world’s largest data centers given the efficiency it provides to storage arrays and the immediate action needed for freeing up power within data centers to fuel power-hungry GPUs.
The level of resiliency built into the drives also should be welcome news for IT managers seeking to modernize their storage environments, but potentially sitting on the fence for concerns about QLC reliability and longevity. We’ve got some serious FOMO about not having our deployment plans in place at TechArena and are wondering…what would you do with 122?
Watch this space for more.
We write a lot on TechArena about applications of technology to propel business, connect us in virtual communities, and propel humanity forward with scientific discovery and advancement.
The topic of the moment, of course, is artificial intelligence (AI) and how it’s vastly transforming how technology is serving as an increasingly valuable tool in productivity and insight. In all of these stories, there are a couple of foundational truths: everything reaped from the technology spectrum comes from processing and insight of data, and that data resides in infrastructure based on a silicon foundation.
This is why Solidigm’s gathering in Manhattan last night to introduce their latest QLC NAND feat – the delivery of the D5-P5336 – a first-of-its-kind 122 terabyte drive, is a foundational advancement for the broadest range of innovation. With its introduction, Solidigm maintains its QLC NAND leadership position that it first established with the quad bit per cell technology introduction in 2018. They recently passed 100EB of QLC NAND shipped, redefining what’s possible in data center-to-edge storage environments.
Before we delve deeper into the impact that it will have across markets, let’s unwrap the drive details. QLC NAND was developed for maximum storage density, storing 4 bits per NAND cell. This density also yields improved cost and energy efficiency but has some perceived tradeoffs in design, with lower write speed and endurance but notably higher read speeds.
Historic perception of QLC NAND has also questioned the durability of the drives. As the leader in QLC technology, Solidigm has been tackling these challenges focusing on delivering TLC performance with QLC technology. How have they done it? One thing that characterizes serious SSD innovation is whether a company is driving their own controller architecture, and Solidigm is serious about controller design as well as firmware engineering to drive up write performance. What has this resulted in within the D5-P5336 drive? Solidigm is claiming a 134.3 PBW rated endurance, which, in practical terms, promises 5 years of constant read and write without wearing out.
That’s an incredible achievement that opens the door for QLC NAND in a lot of new environments.
The new drive delivers 7,400 megabytes per second (MB/s) and comes in a variety of form factors including U.2 and E1.L, providing flexibility to systems designers for integrating into a variety of system configurations from edge to cloud. Notably, it sips power per TB, perfect for high-capacity data challenges where power savings is critical to free up needed watts for compute.
And then there’s, well, the ridiculous amount of capacity that this delivers. To put into perspective, you’d need about 500 drives to store IMDb’s 13 million movie catalog in HD. Four drives could store all of Spotify’s 100 million song titles. These examples put into context real use cases where large scale data pipelines are required. Let’s unpack a few offered from the Solidigm event:
PEAK AIO: Roger Cummings, CEO of PEAK AIO was on hand to share their vision for utilizing storage innovation to drive improved density in AI and HPC environments. PEAK AIO is driving solutions to the edge, carving a role for themselves with efficiency platform deployments. The market has responded well with a 4X growth of deployments within the last year. What markets are they targeting? Edge solutions can be found across verticals and applications as diverse as visual analytics, drones, MRI machines and more.
VAST Data: Renen Hallak, Founder and CEO of VAST Data, discussed how his team is driving a profound redefinition of data platform delivery for AI. Renen discussed a seven year history of collaboration with Solidigm to deliver innovation to customers and discussed how his data platforms, those covered broadly on TechArena, were to be found in the “biggest of the big” including QLC drives. The 122 TB drive, in Renen’s mind, presents the moment to move away from hard drives to a fully SSD era, accelerated by AI models.
CoreWeave: Jacob Yundt, Director of Compute Architecture at CoreWeave, was on hand to discuss how his team was building native cloud services for AI, and how his company is tapping QLC NAND to drive the scale of data that are required by his customers. The collaboration with Solidigm runs deep with Coreweave, as evidenced by the TechArena interview with Jacob from GTC earlier this year. Jacob claimed that “what we’re doing wouldn’t be possible without these high-capacity drives because our customers say ‘I need all of it’ and we’re constantly seeking more storage.”
Arm: Chloe Jian Ma, VP China GTM and IoT Line of Business at Arm, discussed how data center and cloud infrastructure require increased efficiency starting with Arm processors and extending to efficient storage deployment. Chloe discussed how hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, are seeking these platforms to drive the energy savings to free up energy to fuel their AI training.
Ocient: Sophie Kane, Director of Growth Marketing at Ocient, discussed always-on compute intensive workload management bringing compute and storage closer together and delivering 50-90% improved compute and storage deployment efficiency. Sophie emphasized the close collaboration with Solidigm hardware and Ocient software to deliver infrastructure sustainability and more acutely energy efficiency. Ocient solutions are targeted to a variety of verticals driving analytics solutions deep into the enterprise.
So what should we make of the drive introduction? SSD demand has been on a tear with the rise of AI in the data center, and we do not see this adoption curve slowing down as enterprises seek to implement generative AI at scale in their edge-to-cloud environments in 2025. Getting the likes of VAST Data and CoreWeave to show up for an SSD introduction underscores the importance of this foundational silicon innovation to the big things these companies are doing in the AI arena. It also showcases Solidigm’s unique savvy operating in the data center arena and understanding “up the stack” requirements that transforms them from procurement engagement to strategic technology collaborator.
The work the Solidigm team has delivered within controller and firmware development highlights their tech prowess that puts them atop drive considerations for these markets. I expect the 122 TB capacity to get a lot of attention from the world’s largest data centers given the efficiency it provides to storage arrays and the immediate action needed for freeing up power within data centers to fuel power-hungry GPUs.
The level of resiliency built into the drives also should be welcome news for IT managers seeking to modernize their storage environments, but potentially sitting on the fence for concerns about QLC reliability and longevity. We’ve got some serious FOMO about not having our deployment plans in place at TechArena and are wondering…what would you do with 122?
Watch this space for more.
