High-density QLC SSDs break the 4 KiB assumptions baked into today’s storage stacks: their larger indirection units inflate write-amplification, erode endurance, and force vendors to add costly, power-hungry DRAM to the drive’s FTL. Simply packing more flash is no longer enough—performance, longevity, and TCO all take a hit as capacities climb toward 122.88 TB and beyond.
Cloud Storage Acceleration Layer (CSAL) solves that bottleneck by moving a lightweight FTL into the host and fronting QLC with a fast cache tier. Writes land first on SLC/TLC (formerly Optane) media, then flush to QLC as large, sequential blocks, driving WAF down to ~1 while preserving flash endurance and keeping power budgets flat. The approach delivers SSD-class throughput, eight-times density per slot, and requires zero changes to the 4 KiB-optimized host software stack.
To prove the model, Solidigm partnered with Wiwynn, pairing a Gen5 D7-PS1010 TLC cache with 122.88 TB D5-P5336 QLC drives in production-ready Wiwynn platforms. Mixed-workload testing across AMD and Intel servers hit NAND-saturating bandwidth, maintained QoS at 90 % fill, and slashed watt-per-TB metrics—validating CSAL as a turnkey path for hyperscalers and enterprises to adopt ultra-dense flash without compromising performance or budget.
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