Nobody seems to talk about SATA SSDs much anymore, even though there’s still a vibrant market. NVMe is garnering all the attention. Of course, that should come as no surprise. While SATA is an extension of an interface designed around HDDs, NVMe was designed specifically for NAND flash.
Still, lots of Continue reading “Supporting a Dynamic SATA Market”
Micron has announced a new line of Enterprise SSDs that it has named the 5100 family. The three members of the family are designated by different suffixes: 5100 ECO, 5100 PRO, and 5100 MAX, as listed in the table below.
The three models support the same maximum read IOPS performance, but have a wide range of write IOPS figures, endurance (measured in DWPD = Drive Writes per Day), and maximum capacities.
All of these SSDs are based on Micron’s 3-bit 3D NAND. Micron has been aggressively ramping its 3D NAND technology since it began shipments in earnest last June.
The three SSD models are designed using the same fundamental firmware architecture, which Micron has named FlexPro, to yield consistent performance and reliability across the family, and with the hopes that customers will be able to qualify all three models in a single effort, which would provide one more reason for users to source their Continue reading “Micron Unveils New 5100 Enterprise SSDs”
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?”
LSI’s SandForce has just rolled out its SF3700 family of four SSD controllers aimed at the Entry Client, Mainstream Client, Value Enterprise, and Enterprise Storage marketplaces. Performance is impressive, with worst-case random PCIe IOPS at 150K read/81K write and 94K/46K for the SATA interface.
The SF3700 family builds on the division’s first two product families by adding a choice of PCIe or SATA interfaces, LDPC error correction, and a boosted set of flash management features. The SSD Guy will explore this last point after highlighting the other two.
By providing both PCIe and SATA interfaces LSI is directly addressing the future: PCs are aiming to move to the m.2 SSD specification rather than Continue reading “LSI SandForce SSD Controllers Move the Knee in the Curve”
Today Intel announced a new SATA III SSD, the DC S3700 Series. The new product is fast, supporting 75,000 random 4K read IOPS and 36,000 random 4K write IOPS. Average read latency is 45microseconds (µs) with writes averaging 65µs. Sustained sequential reads are 500 megabytes/sec with sustained sequential writes at 460. The read performance of this SSD, although a SATA device, is twice that of Intel’s 710 PCIe SSD announced in April, and writes are a full 15 times faster. Intel calls this performance: “Scary fast!”
Intel says this device is its best Continue reading “Intel Intros Fast Datacenter SATA SSD”
Now that we have seen announcements of hybrid drives from Western Digital and Seagate, Toshiba arrives with a formal announcement of the product that was on display at last month’s Flash Memory Summit. Two 2.5″ Toshiba hybrid drives are starting to sample at 750GB and 1TB capacities. Both have 8GB NAND caches, 6Gb/s SATA 3 interfaces, and 5,400RPM spindle speeds. They are both built using 32nm SLC NAND, Toshiba’s “generation before last” technology, preceding the 24nm and 19nm nodes shipping in high volume today.
More importantly, both are 9.5mm in height, a thickness that renders them difficult to incorporate into the 18mm maximum thickness of the smaller Ultrabooks – a notebook form factor that Intel is heavily promoting.
How is this whole market Continue reading “Toshiba Announces its Hybrid Drive”
SSD maker OCZ has been on something of a tear recently, introducing three new solid state storage products in three weeks:
On Monday December 13 SandForce introduced SSD controllers designed specifically for cloud computing applications.
You might wonder what is so different about cloud applications that they need an SSD controller of their own. SandForce makes some interesting points:
There’s a lot of “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt” – FUD – circulating about SSDs and their penchant for failure. NAND flash wears out after a set number of erase/write cycles, a specification known as the flash’s endurance.
While some caution is warranted, a good understanding of how SSDs really behave will help to allay a lot of this concern. Continue reading “What Happens when SSDs Fail?”
On October 26 LSI announced its acquisition of leading SSD controller maker SandForce. The privately-held firm has made significant strides in the development of high-performance controllers that have gained great popularity through a string of impressive benchmark results in the online reviewer community. Continue reading “LSI Acquires SandForce”
