Pure Storage aims to ship 300TB flash drives within three years

Pure Storage aims to ship 300TB flash drives within three years



Pure Storage, a leading manufacturer of flash storage devices, has announced that the capacity of its proprietary Direct Flash Module (DFM) solid-state drives will reach 300TB by 2026. The increase will be possible thanks to the advances in the areal density of 3D NAND , which will allow a drastic increase in capacity.

In fact, as stated by Alex McMullan , CTO of Pure Storage, in an interview with Blocks & Files, the company aims to improve its competitive position in the storage market over the next two years. The company is currently shipping 24TB and 48TB DFM drives, but aims to launch even larger models, with ambitions for 300TB drives by 2026.

Pure's proprietary DFM drives Storage are designed only for use with the same company's FlashArray and FlashBlade storage systems. The devices resemble SSDs in a smaller form factor and use standard U.2 NVMe connectivity, but are designed to work only with particular machines. The modules use enterprise-grade SSD controllers, with custom firmware, and 3D NAND TLC or QLC memory chips.



Photo Credit: Pure Storage

Photo Credit: Pure Storage To achieve the goal of increasing the capacity of DFM drives six times by 2026, Pure Storage will have to rely on several strategies. For example, it could use more sophisticated 3D NAND ICs. Currently, the company uses 3D NAND devices with 112-160 layers, but over the next five years, the number of active layers is expected to increase to 400-500. In addition, 3D NAND manufacturers introduce new generations of their devices roughly every two years, so 3D NAND is expected to be around 300 layers in 2025 and 3D NAND around 400 layers in 2027. Pure Storage may also use packages that contain more 3D NAND, which will require new controllers. Or, the company could increase the number of packages and adopt a larger footprint for DFMs.