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 the 12Gb/s SAS interface, according to the company. HGST’s 400 series of SSDs was limited to 550MB/s by the 6Gb/s SAS interface. With the new interface, bandwidth and IOPS increase while latency decreases. HGST has also emphasized consistent performance, which is a new focus for most SSD makers. Performance is not only better than the prior generation but also has a narrower distribution, as is shown in this post’s graphic: a latency histogram. The red columns are the new drive and the blue columns are HGST’s prior generation.
All models offer a 1,200 MB/s sequential read rate and 145K read IOPS. Sequential writes are 750MB/s for the MH and 700MB/s for the MM and MR. Write IOPS appear in the table.
|
100% Write IOPS |
70/30 R/W IOPS |
DWPD |
Capacities |
|
|
MH |
100K |
120K |
25 |
800/400/200GB |
|
MM |
70K |
110K |
10 |
800/400/200GB |
|
MR |
20K |
36K |
2 |
1TB/500/250GB |
The SSD Guy tips his hat to HGST for a job well done.
Objective Analysis has a report covering the enterprise SSD market. The Enterprise SSD: Technologies and Markets can be purchased for immediate download from the Objective Analysis website.
