Intel's 32TB 'ruler' SSD is super weird

This extradense solid-state drive has an unusual shape, designed to maximize efficiency for cloud storage.

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Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.

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Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.

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Ty Pendlebury

Aug. 10, 2018 12:31 p.m. PT

intel-ssd-dc-p4500 — Walden Kirsch/Intel

Intel has invented a new shape for solid state drives: the "ruler." It's a foot-long housing primarily for use in datacenters.

Intel describes its 32TB DC P4500 as "the world's densest SSD." By combining 32 of these "rulers" together you can hold up to 1 petabyte of data -- that's a thousand terabytes.

The new design is intended to reduce cooling costs and take up a fraction of the space of traditional 2.5-inch drives.

The ruler is an enterprise product only. It has its PCIe NVMe connection on one end, so its 12-inch length wouldn't fit if you tried to use it in a consumer system. You can read more from our business-minded colleagues at ZDNet.com.