Pizza-Sized 44TB SSD Created from Micron's 20nm Memory (Video)

Solid-state drives may have standard shapes and sizes, but Skyera and Micron didn't really care about meeting any sort of expectations, except their own perhaps, when they created Skyhawk.

The device isn't actually called a solid-state drive, but that is essentially what it is: a storage product made of NAND Flash chips.

Micron and Skyera took the former 128 Gb multi-level-cell (MLC) NAND Flash memory, built on the 20nm technology, and stacked it in packages of eight.

Each 8-die package has a capacity of 1 Tb. Micron's 20nm monolithic 128Gb device is the first in the industry to enable such a capacity on a single package the size of a fingertip.

Speaking of sizes, the over 3,000 storage components were arranged in such a way that the Skyhawk ended up measuring about the same as a pizza box. The total capacity is of 44 TB.

"The capacity point achieved by our Skyhawk would not have been possible without Micron's 128Gb chip," said Radoslav Danilak, chief executive of Skyera.

"Skyhawk will revolutionize the mainstream enterprise solid-state storage market by delivering next-generation performance and capacity at a price point equivalent to spinning disks. All that is possible because of our collaboration with Micron in bringing leading-edge NAND to the enterprise market."

Skyhawk fits inside a standard 1U rack, making it compatible with pretty much every server system out there.

Normally, server racks are full-featured systems, with CPUs, I/O, storage, networking, etc., but the new storage unit is a solid alternative to HDD arrays, being much faster while compensating for lower capacity through sheer density.

At the end of the day, the lower environment footprint and power costs involved are just a very nice boon.

Micron and Skyera are mass-producing the Skyhawk and, from what we can gather, have secured the interest of several customers already.