Fadu’s FC5161 PCIe Gen5 SSD Controller Debut in Western Digital’s Enterprise Drives

So when Western Digital launched its Ultrastar DC SN861 SSDs earlier this year, everyone assumed they had created the controller in-house. But, spoiler alert, they didn’t – they’re actually using one from Fadu, a South Korean company founded in 2015 that focuses on enterprise-grade SSD solutions.

This drive is targeted at those crazy-performance-seeking hyperscale data centers and enterprise customers who are finally making the switch to PCIe Gen5 storage devices. And, as we know from Storage Review’s latest article, the drive runs on Fadu’s FC5161 NVMe 2.0-compliant controller, which boasts an impressive array of features.

The FC5161 sports 16 NAND channels that support ONFi 5.0 2400 MT/s interface, with a host of enterprise-grade capabilities that set it apart from other off-the-shelf controllers – and any previous Western Digital controllers for that matter. You’ll find things like OCP Cloud Spec 2.0, SR-IOV, up to 512 namespaces for ZNS support, flexible data placement, NVMe-MI 1.2, advanced security, telemetry, power loss protection, and more.

As for raw performance, the Ultrastar DC SN861 is no slouch, hitting sequential read speeds of up to 13.7 GB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 7.5 GB/s. It also delivers on random performance, with an impressive up to 3.3 million random 4K read IOPS and up to 0.8 million random 4K write IOPS.

You can snag this drive in capacities ranging from 1.6 TB to 7.68 TB, with options for one or three drive writes per day (DWPD) over five years. And, for those tech enthusiasts out there, there are U.2 and E1.S form-factor options – the E1.S being tailored specifically for cloud environments, while the U.2 model is geared towards high-performance enterprise tasks and emerging applications like AI.

One of the standout features of the Ultrastar DC SN861 is its power consumption: a whopping 5W idle, which is insanely low compared to other enterprise-grade drives. Now, you might be thinking that 1W doesn’t sound like a huge difference, but trust me – when you’re talking thousands of drives in a data center, every watt counts.

As for pricing, we’re still waiting for Western Digital to drop that info. But for select customers (like Meta, for example) and interested parties, the Ultrastar DC SN861 is available now. Just expect the prices to vary based on factors like volume, because hyperscalers – and, let’s be real, everyone else who wants high-performance storage – are always looking for that sweet TCO spot.

Sources: Fadu and Storage Review