The evolution of storage technology, from spinning disks to solid-state drives, has been transformative, exemplified by Solidigm SSDs, which redefine performance, affordability and endurance, according to Avi Shetty (pictured), senior director of AI and ecosystem partnerships at Solidigm.

The company’s SSDs achieve this by utilizing advanced NAND flash technology, including high -capacity 3D NAND with optimized layer stacking, to maximize performance.

Solidigm’s Avi Shetty talks to theCUBE about the game-changing impact of Solidigm SSDs.

“We are a fully integrated enterprise storage provider,” Shetty said. “We make our own NAND. We launched the world’s highest dense SSD on a single form factor last week. It’s 122.22 terabytes on a single U.2 form factor. You pair eight of these and you get a one petabyte on a single one U rack. In a span of 15 years, you’ve seen the storage ecosystem evolve and push the bandwidth envelope where this is 122 terabytes on a PCIe Gen 4 and on a 3D NAND, which the internet technology here is a 192 layer 3D NAND technology.”

Shetty spoke with theCUBE Research’s John Furrier and Dave Vellante at SC24, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the transformative nature of Solidigm SSDs. (* Disclosure below.)

How Solidigm SSDs fit into AI pipelines

As the demand for artificial intelligence skyrockets, Solidigm SSDs play a crucial role in AI pipelines by offering optimized storage solutions tailored to the demands of AI workloads. This triggers high-speed data access, enhanced workflows and large-scale data handling, according to Shetty.

“Let’s talk about how storage fits into the AI pipeline and what inefficiencies it helps solve,” he said. “Unfortunately, today, 80% to 85% of data centers still are on a hard drive. When it comes to random IOPS, we measure performance in the SSD world with IOPS, a typical hard drive is in the order of 1000 or maybe 2000 IOPS per second, and we are talking a million IOPS here, which are extremely critical for all the different phases of an AI pipeline. When it comes to inferencing, check-pointing and then eventually archiving, you have benefits across the pipeline, which an SSD can solve, and a high density one has a better TCO angle.” 

Solidigm exemplifies the strides made in storage technology, offering solutions that are pivotal in today’s data-driven and AI-centric landscape. As a result, the firm is focused on improving SSD performance, endurance and power efficiency to meet the demands of modern computing environments, Shetty pointed out.

“Solidigm is an independent, 100% fully-owned subsidiary of SK Hynix,” he noted. “We are ex-Intel. The Intel storage division, which made Intel SSDs for enterprise and client, was spun off and we created Solidigm. Even though Solidigm’s a relatively new company, we formed in December of ’21, but our legacy spans decades. We have the Intel innovation and the architecture of SK Hynix. With SK Hynix, we have all the manufacturing fab capacity, as well as the fab know-how … we’ve made SSDs since it was formed.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of SC24: 

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for SC24. Neither Dell Technologies Inc. and WekaIO Inc., the premier sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE