Sandisk teases 'dynamite' new SSD controller dubbed Stargate

Sandisk's CEO, David Goeckeler, has been boasting about a formidable new SSD controller dubbed Stargate. Combining Stargate with the latest BiCS8 Quad Level Cell (QLC) NAND, the company has a "dynamite project" in its hands, teased Goeckeler. ComputerBase reports (machine translation) that this should mean some massive capacity SSDs are on the way, scaling up to 512TB drives in 2027.

We don't have much in the way of technical details about the Stargate controller at this time, but we can read between the lines of the CEO's statement, and ponder over previous announcements and roadmaps. "We have a new architecture coming out in the next couple of quarters that we call Stargate, new ASIC, clean sheet design and then, with BiCS 8 QLC … we just think that’s going to be a dynamite project," ComputerBase attributes this statement to Goeckeler, taken from a recent investor Q&A session.

Based on the above, it may well be that Sandisk is going to leverage the Stargate controller and BiCS8 NAND in 128TB SSDs in the new DC SN670 data center drives, starting from Q3 this year. Moreover, roadmaps indicate that Sandisk aims to market 256TB drives the next year, and double up again with 512TB drives in 2027. The DC SN670 enterprise series SSDs were previously flagged as PCIe 5.0, but there is also the possibility that Stargate will be a technology that renews the series with up to a PCIe 6.0 interface.

(Image credit: Sandisk)

(Image credit: Sandisk)

For these expansive data center drives with new BiCS8 QLC NAND, with capacities of 2Tb (256TB) per IC, it is expected that the new controller will be scalable to 64 dies per channel. As ComputerBase notes, that will likely mean 32 channels would be required on the 512TB drive (coming 2027). Meanwhile, current client SSDs typically only offer up to eight channels.

With Computex around the corner, we hope that Sandisk can bring us up to date with what look to be rapidly developing plans for its capacious new SSDs. It would also be great to see larger capacity consumer SSD drives gain momentum via new levels of performance and affordability.

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