Enterprise MLC SSD Launched with SLC Endurance

Newark based Californian company Smart Storage Systems has just announced a new SSD product line targeted for enterprise use. The new additions use the well-known MLC NAND flash memory, but the company claims impressive endurance rivaling SLC flash.

The smaller the NAND manufacturing process, the lower the endurance of the SSD drives when being rewritten.

Back when NAND was built in 35 nm manufacturing technology, the usual P/E cycle endurance was around 35K. That means that every flash memory cell on the SSD was certified to be written, erased and rewritten again successfully 35,000 times.

Now that most drives are using NAND built in 25 nm technology, most SSDs are only certified for a 5K P/E cycle or even 3K.

Once 1x nm technologies will become available, the endurance is likely to be even harder to ensure.

For enterprise use, such low endurance is not acceptable and usually SLC NAND flash is recommended.

The problem is that SLC flash memory is much more expensive than MLC flash and the costs usually are considerable even for enterprise users.

Many companies are developing special technologies that will make MLC last longer and endure more P/E cycles than the usual 3K or 5K level that’s characteristic for current 25 nm flash.

Most of the technologies used are based on special firmware that improves on the usual wear leveling measures and have special error recovery techniques.

Smart Storage Systems doesn’t give any technical details on the company’s Guardian Technology Platform, but claims that it has now been able to achieve a 50 daily P/E cycle certification for its new Optimus Ultra+ product line.

Taking into account a normal 3-year warranty for an enterprise SSD, a certified endurance of 50 daily P/E cycles amounts to an amazing 54650 P/E cycle certification for the entire warranty period.

The new drives are using Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface and are available in capacities ranging from 200 GB to 800 GB.

Performance is rated quite high at 500 MB/s in dual port and 1GB/s in wide port operation with random read/write performance of 100K/60K IOPS.    

Pricing information was not been made available.