|
|
Micron demos ultra fast 1GB/sec SSD
Pair of solid state disks mounted on PCI-E cards show stunning potential of storage technology
It may be a while before this technology reaches the average PC or laptop, but Micron has demonstrated potential read speeds of over 1GB/sec on its latest Washington SSDs, which are mounted on PCI-E cards.
On Micron’s Advanced Storage Blog, Joe Jeddeloh from the company demonstrated the potential of its advanced SLC (single level cell) SSD technology in a particularly amateur and shaky video (see below), but if the claims are correct then Micron is really onto a winner here. The video shows two SSD PCI-E cards running on an eight-core Xeon system. Unfortunately, you can’t see the details in the benchmarks, but Jeddeloh claims that the pair of cards are racking up 200,000 IOPS (input/output operations per second) in the test.
He also makes some interesting claims about the cards’ speed in random write tests, which are still slower than the read tests, but a lot quicker than current SSDs, with a single SSD card apparently managing 80,000 IOPS and a pair of cards handling between 150,000 and 160,000 IOPS.
In terms of raw bandwidth figures, Jeddeloh says that one drive can read at around 800MB/sec, while a pair of cards can read at 1GB/sec. As a point of comparison, Intel’s X25-M SSD had an average read speed of 225.7MB/sec in our tests, and the S-ATA II interface only has a maximum transfer rate of 300MB/sec.
Micron claims that there’s nothing special about the flash memory it uses, and that the drives are still ‘your typical vanilla SSDs.’ The difference, according to Jeddeloh, is that it’s ‘managed correctly.’ At the end of the video, Jeddeloh also shows off a single 8x PCI-E card that features two SSDs on a single card that he says can also offer 1GB/sec of bandwidth.
Micron says that it plans ‘wide availability’ of the product in 2010, but that it’s going to be targeted at enterprise customers first. However, the company does say that ‘this is a good indication on where this technology can take us in the future,’ adding that ‘it is within the realm of possibility to deliver this type of performance in a laptop if the architecture would support it.’ Currently, standard desktop and laptop buses would be unable to provide the throughput needed, but if that was to change in the future then we could be looking at incredibly fast SSDs in the future.
Reddit | Technorati
You wouldn't want to shell out for one of these and then put it in a 1x pcie slot it would not have the bandwidth to cope with it......the Fusion IO product uses an X4 pcie slot but I believe will operate in a X1 slot but at reduced performance....the Fusion IO product is meant to be $30 per gigabyte and come in sizes 80 upto 640 GB....so not for the faint hearted but wow what performance.
Comment by technogiant at 3:53pm 30th November 2008
This thing is not yet ready for broad use. It is too expensive, most people do not trust the reliability of SSDs and some even dislike the asymmetric transfer speeds. I personally dislike the need for a full size PCIe slot and would want something that fits in a 1x PCIe slot.
Comment by sdack at 8:36am 29th November 2008
Price? will they be a lot less than the X25's? I would hope so else just like the X25's we could only dream of affording one let alone two :) but really, will it be cheaper than equivalent normal SSD? Can we expect this to drive down costs? if it cant be produced more cheaply because of the number of chips needed to populate the board then we wont just have to wait till 2010 to see them, we could be waiting a whole millenium before we can AFFORD one :) Still its great news if its true and can be used to bring superior SSD's, to the masses, sooner. hmm just thought, if this speed increase is just down to meory controllers, shouldnt they be able to then apply the superior control to ANY storage device? if they are Vanilla drives then the savings in speed must be down to the controller or its drivers? maybe its time to go dual crazy X2 and add multiple northbridges,GPUs and CPUs and SSD's and just build a new system around QUAD everything?? :D mwahaha Multiple electric bills we cant afford...multiple divorce :)
Comment by hazed100 at 5:39pm 28th November 2008
Fusion IO have already have such a card...in Q1 2009 they are releasing a bootable version aimed at the workstation/enthusiast market. www.fusionio.com
Comment by technogiant at 10:26am 28th November 2008
What I dont understand is why it will take us until 2010 before we can see these. If it is as Micron says that it is normal "vanilla" SSDs just managed properly. Why would it take more than 1 year to release a new controller for SSDs. I must be missing something. There is something fishy about all this. I cant believe that Intel, Samsung didnt know how to make proper controllers for their SSDs. I can understand that they might not have done it perfect but with this much difference in performance........
Comment by jonisaksson at 7:08pm 27th November 2008
Well I dont understand what a theoretic limit of a new USB specification has to do with Solid State discs? Just because you can transfer something over USB at a certain rate doesnt mean that hard disks or SSD will ever get there.
Comment by jonisaksson at 3:55pm 27th November 2008
but, i was reading on tom's hardware about the new 3.0 usb with a transfer rate of up to 3GB/sec so you know... now that tells me that things can get much faster, and these are just scratching the surface.
Comment by lunarus at 9:02am 27th November 2008
Are you mad? Imagine the potential of loading games onto it, transferring files to and from it and Crysis level loading!! Instant dribbling from ones mouth!! ;)
Comment by Lightning_Pete at 12:50am 27th November 2008
That is the face of a man incredibly impressed with himself. He can barely contain his smile I would be too if I’d just made such a fast SSD. All he is wondering now is what will he do with all the money. If I had just won the lottery id be emailing him now.
Comment by madluko at 11:39pm 26th November 2008
I'd prefer them to spend their money making better products than replacing monitors that don't need replacing. And 1GB/s, sounds nice for server usage. Using a proper Database on that would be interesting.
Comment by reashlin at 6:30pm 26th November 2008
that's some seriously impressive bandwidth, but something is getting to me. why does micron's development lab have so many CRT's? you would think that a company as massive as them would be able to afford TFT's for all it's machines, especially when those machines are testing their next-gen products. the monitor the guy was using was the only LCD i saw.
Comment by yougotkicked at 6:20pm 26th November 2008
Looks damn impressive. I was particularly impressed by the super-cheesey presentation skills of Micron's Big Cheese.
Comment by Spreadie at 6:14pm 26th November 2008
Make a Comment
- One top four motherboard maker will die, says MSI
- AMD plans supercomputer with 1,000 GPUs
- Nvidia announces GeForce GTX 285
- Creative takes wraps off Zii processor architecture
- Nvidia announces stereoscopic 3D glasses
- BFG unveils hand built Phobos gaming PCs
- UPDATED: LiveJournal announces mass layoffs
- Top 10 PC games chart
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 gets 500GB on single platter
- Creative reveals new Zii processor
These are the most popular news articles over the past seven days.
- Phenom II overclocked to 6GHz
- GeIL unveils Cyclone RAM cooler
- Rumour control: GeForce GTX 260 GX2 in January
- Nvidia cuts price of 216 SP GeForce GTX 260
- VIDEO: PC version of Mirror’s Edge features hardware PhysX
- Get Half-Life for less than a dollar on Steam
- IBM plans to build virtual human brain
- RivaTuner 2.20 adds SLI and CrossFire support
- VIDEO: ArmA II trailer released
Mobile Broadband
Fastest, cheapest 3G mobile broadband dongles from 3, Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange
from just £10/month
