One-Hop vs. Two-Hop PCIe SSDs

Bunny HopLately a number of PCIe offerings have hit the SSD market.  The SSD Guy breaks them into two camps: One-Hop SSDs, in which the commands are translated directly from PCIe to the NAND flash without going through an intermediary protocol, and Two-Hop SSDs, which use off-the-shelf HBAs and SATA SSD controllers to move commands first from PCIe to SATA then from SATA to NAND.  There are aslo versions that go through SAS: PCIe to SAS, then SAS to NAND.

The SSD Guy figured that Easter would be a good time to talk about these since everyone already has the Easter Bunny hopping through their minds!

It’s not hard to understand why Continue reading “One-Hop vs. Two-Hop PCIe SSDs”