The m.2 SSD format has become wildly successful in the data center for use as a boot drive and even in SSD arrays. The m.2 format supports either the SATA or the NVMe interface, Something that has been missing, however, is a version of this format for high-availability (HA) systems. These are mission-critical systems that cannot fail, no matter what.
Until today HA systems had to Continue reading “High Availability in an m.2 Format”
The SSD Guy was recently asked whether HDDs would continue, at least through 2019, to remain preferable to SSDs as cost-effective high-capacity storage. The answer was “Yes”.
Longtime readers will note that I steadfastly maintain that HDD and SSD gigabyte prices are unlikely to cross for a very long time. Historically, a gigabyte of NAND flash has cost between ten to twenty times as much as a gigabyte of HDD. Let’s look at where Objective Analysis expects things to go by 2019.
Our current projections call for NAND price per gigabyte to reach 4.4 cents in 2019. I would expect for HDD to still be 1/10th to 1/20th of that price. Most likely 1/10th, since we expect for NAND flash to be in a significant oversupply at that time and will be selling at cost.
If HDD prices continue to hover around $50, then a 2019 HDD price of 0.44 to 0.22 cents per gigabyte (1/10th to 1/20th of the price of NAND flash) would imply an average HDD capacity of 11-23TB.
A couple of weeks ago, on December 2, 2015, Western Digital’s HGST introduced its Continue reading “Is an HDD/SSD Price Crossover Coming Soon?”
In case you didn’t have enough abbreviations in your life, The SSD Guy brings you the headline above, with the promise that the news below is really interesting: HGST (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technology, but now a division of WDC – Western Digital Corp.) has brought out a new line of 12Gb/s SAS SSDs based on MLC flash. These are a part of the UltraStar line.
Whereas HGST’s first-generation UltraStar SAS SSDs used SLC flash, the new SSDs are based on 25nm MLC flash but offer the same warranties as HGST’s prior generation. Even so, performance for the new SSDs is significantly faster than that of their SLC-based predecessors, with no reduction in wear or lifetime specifications.
These SSDs are the first to support Continue reading “WDC’s HGST Intros 12G SAS MLC SSDs”
Link_A_Media, recently graced with a new design win and serious accolades for its new SSD controller, was acquired on June 20 by Korea’s SK Hynix Semiconductor.
According to the Wall Street Journal, SK Hynix paid $248 million for the company.
This is the fourth SSD controller company to be acquired recently:
What’s going on? Why are Continue reading “Link_A_Media Acquired by SK Hynix”
Today Hitachi announced the company’s second generation Ultrastar SSD400S.B family, which Hitachi claims to be the industry’s first 25nm SLC enterprise-class SSD family.
This comes only two days after Intel announced a 25nm MLC SSD – Intel‘s highest-performance SSD to date.
The new Hitachi SSDs support a SAS 6Gb/s dual port interface. SLC NAND flash was chosen for its high write performance and endurance.
Maximum sequential read speeds of 536MB/s and a sequential write speed of up to 520MB/s with 57K random read IOPS and 25K random write IOPS help to give ultra-fast access to data.
