Future Of Memory Storage 2025 Sandisk UltraQLC PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD Inside 3
High-capacity QLC NAND arrays are clearly a hot topic in the industry these days. We have already shown Solidigm D5-P5336 122.88TB-class 2.5″ drives. As 2.5″ form factors fade away starting in late 2026, the industry must make a transition to a new form factor. Meta is making the case for a new E2 form factor to allow 1PB+ 80W SSDs, which would bring storage servers into a scaling trajectory more aligned to GPU servers.
A Meta Vision for GPU Scale Compute with 1PB E2 SSDs
One notable development in the industry is that Meta is discussing the use of huge SSDs, as QLC technology allows for fine-tuning performance per TB and also…
Future Of Memory Storage 2025 Sandisk UltraQLC PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD Inside 3
High-capacity QLC NAND arrays are clearly a hot topic in the industry these days. We have already shown Solidigm D5-P5336 122.88TB-class 2.5″ drives. As 2.5″ form factors fade away starting in late 2026, the industry must make a transition to a new form factor. Meta is making the case for a new E2 form factor to allow 1PB+ 80W SSDs, which would bring storage servers into a scaling trajectory more aligned to GPU servers.
A Meta Vision for GPU Scale Compute with 1PB E2 SSDs
One notable development in the industry is that Meta is discussing the use of huge SSDs, as QLC technology allows for fine-tuning performance per TB and also enables power savings by utilizing larger drives.
Meta Ross E2 QLC In The Real World QLC Performance Per TB
One of the challenges with both E3 and E1 EDSFF SSDs is that they are not really designed for maximum capacity with QLC NAND.
Meta Ross E2 QLC In The Real World E1 And E3 Comparison
The call to action is to build a new E2 form factor that maximizes the number of NAND placements, thereby standardizing on a next-generation form factor.
Meta Ross E2 QLC In The Real World Best For QLC 2
This proposal is called E2. It uses the EDSFF connectors that are common with other form factors. The difference is that it allows for proper cooling, while also maximizing the number of NAND placements on the PCB. That will lead to higher capacities.
Meta Ross E2 QLC In The Real World E2 Proposal
The goal is to create 1PB devices at 80W. Meta showed this off in a 40-drive chassis. As capacities scale, this is 40PB per server. Having that much capacity in a single server would mean 3.2kW of drives. On the other hand, it would mean fewer CPUs and NICs for a given PB of storage, so it would make the systems more efficient.
Meta Ross E2 QLC In The Real World For 1PB And Beyond
Meta buys a lot of SSDs, so this was a really neat highlight from Trendfocus. They show the SSD market growing significantly, but the M.2 market is set to crash to around a fifth of what it was in 2024, and the E1.L / E3.L units volumes are going to be very minimal.
Meta Ross E2 QLC In The Real World E1.S To Dominate
The idea here would be E1.S for lower capacity performance tiers and then E2 for storage. Something else notable here is the U.2 unit volumes are set to be more than M.2, E3.L, E3.L, and E1.L volumes combined, even in 2029.
Final Words
Meta’s vision for an E2 form factor is important. This is one of the innovations that will help to drive down the costs of using NAND for capacity storage. Higher-capacity SSDs mean lower costs for controllers versus NAND. Today, the industry has 128TB/ 122.88TB SSDs with the 256TB drives starting to come online. Folks can see the path to 1PB SSDs given the growth of NAND packages. E2 will bring about those capacities much faster just by allowing for more power and more package placements.