Enterprise SSDs
At FMS 2024, Phison devoted significant booth space to their enterprise / datacenter SSD and PCIe retimer solutions, in addition to their consumer products. As a controller / silicon vendor, Phison had historically been working with drive partners to bring their solutions to the market. On the enterprise side, their tie-up with Seagate for the X1 series (and the subsequent Nytro-branded enterprise SSDs) is quite well-known. Seagate supplied the requirements list and had a say in the final firmware before qualifying the drives themselves for their datacenter customers. Such qualification involves a significant resource investment that is possible only by large companies (ruling out most of the tier-two consumer SSD vendors). Phison had demonstrated the Gen 5 X2 platform at last year's FMS as a...
EDSFF Form Factor Updates In 2020: New Versions, Growing Adoption
The Enterprise and Datacenter SSD Form Factor family of standards is now about three years old, and continues to evolve. The EDSFF form factor options are gaining traction in...
6 by Billy Tallis on 11/25/2020New Enterprise SSD Controllers From Silicon Motion, Phison, FADU
In the past month, three SSD controller designers have announced new enterprise NVMe SSD controllers, bringing a wave of new competition to the high-end enterprise/datacenter SSD market. FADU is...
5 by Billy Tallis on 11/25/2020Xilinx and Samsung Launch SmartSSD Computational Storage Drive
At Samsung's Tech Day 2018 they debuted a collaboration with Xilinx to develop Smart SSDs that would combine storage with FPGA-based compute accelerator capabilities. Their proof of concept prototype...
25 by Billy Tallis on 11/12/2020IBM at FMS 2020: Beating TLC With QLC, MRAM And Computational Storage
Two years ago we reported on IBM's FlashCore Module, their custom U.2 NVMe SSD for use in their FlashSystem enterprise storage appliances. Earlier this year IBM released the FlashCore...
5 by Billy Tallis on 11/12/2020Kioxia Announces XD6 Datacenter SSDs: PCIe 4.0 and EDSFF At Scale
Kioxia (formerly Toshiba Memory) is announcing the new XD6 series datacenter NVMe SSDs, featuring PCIe 4.0 support and using the EDSSF E1.S form factors. The XD6 is Kioxia's first...
10 by Billy Tallis on 11/3/2020Marvell and HPE Introduce NVMe RAID Adapter for Server Boot Drives
In 2018 Marvell announced the 88NR2241 Intelligent NVMe Switch: the first—and so far, only—NVMe hardware RAID controller of its kind. Now that chip has scored its first major (public...
29 by Billy Tallis on 10/6/2020Nimbus Data’s New ExaDrive NL: 64 TB of Enterprise Grade QLC in 3.5-inch
Today Nimbus Data, one of the first companies to venture into enterprise flash storage in 2003, is announcing its latest generation ExaDrive product. Following on from the success of...
27 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 8/26/2020Microchip Announces Flashtec NVMe 3108 PCIe 4.0 Enterprise SSD Controller
Microchip is announcing their first PCIe 4.0-capable SSD controller for low-power and entry-level enterprise SSDs. The new Flashtec NVMe 3108 is the smaller 8-channel derivative of the 16-channel Flashtec...
5 by Billy Tallis on 8/4/2020Memblaze Releases New PBlaze5 520 Series Low-Power Enterprise SSDs
Yesterday we saw Memblaze introducing a new series of low-power server-class NVMe SSDs that focus on providing excellent performance whilst maintaining lower power consumption levels, aiming at enterprises improving...
3 by Andrei Frumusanu on 7/30/2020Western Digital Announces Ultrastar DC SN840 Dual-Port NVMe SSD
Western Digital is introducing a new high-end enterprise NVMe SSD, the Ultrastar DC SN840, and a NVMe over Fabrics 2U JBOF using up to 24 of these SSDs. The Ultrastar...
25 by Billy Tallis on 6/24/2020Kioxia Launches PM6: First 24G SAS SSD, up to 30.72 TB
Kioxia (formerly Toshiba Memory) has launched their sixth generation enterprise SAS SSD, the PM6 series. This is the first SSD available to support the latest 24G SAS interface, doubling...
32 by Billy Tallis on 6/16/2020Western Digital Introduces WD Gold Enterprise SSDs
On what would have been the first day of the Open Compute Project's annual Global Summit, Western Digital is bringing out a new line of enterprise SSDs. The WD...
20 by Billy Tallis on 3/4/2020Kingston Releases DC1000M U.2 Datacenter SSD
Kingston has announced that their latest and fastest datacenter SSD is now available. The new DC1000M is a 2.5" U.2 NVMe SSD, taking over the top spot in Kingston's...
3 by Billy Tallis on 3/2/2020Kioxia Releases First PCIe 4.0 SSDs: CD6 & CM6
Following through on their roadmap for transitioning to PCIe 4.0, Kioxia (formerly Toshiba Memory) has announced the availability of their first two PCIe 4.0 SSDs. The CD6 and CM6...
4 by Billy Tallis on 2/20/2020Enterprise NVMe Round-Up 2: SK Hynix, Samsung, DapuStor and DERA
Nine enterprise NVMe SSDs suffer through our updated test suite to show who's who for high-end storage.
33 by Billy Tallis on 2/14/2020Enterprise SATA SSDs: Can Budget 2020 beat Top Line 2017?
Today we're looking at two wildly different enterprise SATA SSDs: the Kingston DC450R entry-level server SSD with the latest controller and 96L 3D NAND, and the Micron 5100 MAX...
21 by Billy Tallis on 2/4/2020Micron Finally Announces A 3D XPoint Product: Micron X100 NVMe SSD
Micron and Intel co-developed 3D XPoint memory as a high-performance alternative to flash, but so far only Intel has brought products to market, under their Optane brand. Despite owning...
30 by Billy Tallis on 10/24/2019Micron Announces 5300 And 7300 Series Enterprise SSDs
Among several announcements today, Micron is updating two families of enterprise/datacenter SSDs to use their latest 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory. SATA Update The new 5300 series SATA drives are...
2 by Billy Tallis on 10/24/2019Intel Shares New Optane And 3D NAND Roadmap - Barlow Pass DIMMs & 144L QLC NAND in 2020
At a press event today in South Korea (?!) Intel shared plans for many of their next round of storage products, including the second generation of Optane enterprise SSDs...
14 by Billy Tallis on 9/25/2019Samsung’s PCIe Gen 4 Enterprise SSDs Get Reliability & Performance Boost
Almost a year after outlining their first roadmap for PCIe 4.0 SSDs, Samsung's first two models are in mass production: the PM1733 and PM1735 high-end datacenter SSDs. Details about...
5 by Billy Tallis & Anton Shilov on 9/20/2019