At FMS 2025, we saw the Phison Pascari D205V. This is the company’s high-capacity NVMe SSD that reaches 122.88TB in capacity. What is more, the drive comes in several different form factors.
Phison Pascari D205V 122.88TB NVMe SSD at FMS 2025
This time last year, we covered the Phison Pascari D200V PCIe Gen5 NVMe SSD with 122.88TB announcement. Now, we have the D205V. These are PCIe Gen5 NVMe SSDs with 0.3 DWPD endurance and up to 14.7GB/s read and 3.2GB/s write speeds.
First, we saw the U.2 2.5″ form factor.
Here you can see the outgoing connector. This U.2 connector has had a long run, but it effectively goes away in the PCIe Gen6 era.
With that, the form factors are changing. To get enough space for PCB and NAND placements, the E3.L 1T is becoming popular for these higher capacity SSDs.
These are thinner drives so one can pack more on a server faceplate than U.2 SSDs.
Just to give you some sense, we put the U.2 on top of the E3.L version so you can see the connectors and get a sense of the size difference.
The E3.S is going to be interesting since the high-capacity space is so hot right now, and that space requires more NAND placement sites so E3.L is usually optimal. The next question is whether there is an opportunity to spec E3.L servers with E3.S spacers if required to get capabilities for both as we transition.
Final Words
Still, for the PCIe Gen5 era, the U.2 form factor is alive and well. 122.8TB SSDs and 24 of them in a 2U is roughly 3PB of capacity. That doubles with the 245TB generation. The AI clusters are really pushing the market for the highest-capacity SSDs, so drives like this are interesting.