Hitachi GST Unveils Ultrastar SAS 6Gbps SSDs with SLC NAND Flash

During the last couple of years, the popularity of Single-level Cell NAND Flash has declined to the point that this sort of memory is pretty much confined to rugged small-capacity SSDs, but Hitachi GST is set to revive SLC NAND with its recently announced Ultrastar SSD400S.B enterprise solid state drives.

Initially, the Ultrastar SSD400S.B series will be comprised of three SSDs with 100GB, 200GB and 400GB capacities, all of these using 25nm NAND Flash manufactured by IMFT, a world first according to Hitachi.

Just like the rest of Hitachi’s solid state drives released into the SSD400S series, these new solutions also use a 6Gbps SAS controller paired together with a proprietary endurance firmware.

Thanks to this firmware, Hitachi GST claims that the 400GB SSD can withstand up to 35 petabytes (PB) of random writes over the life of the drive, which is the equivalent of writing 19.2TB/day for five years.

Furthermore, the Ultrastar SSD400S.B SSDs are optimized to provide fast sequential throughput, its maximum sequential transfer speeds being rated at 536MB/s read and 502MB/s write. The new drives can also deliver up to 57,500 read and 25,500 sustained write IOPS (input/output operations per second).

"Security is a growing concern among enterprise customers, especially those in financial services, e-commerce and online transaction processing," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing, Hitachi GST.

"Our solid state drives are designed to deliver the highest level of performance, while reducing total cost of ownership.

“With our new 25 nm SLC SSDs, our enterprise customers now have the highest level of data protection in an SSD without compromising system performance, reliability and endurance," concluded the company’s rep.

Hitachi GST has already shipped the first Ultrastar SSD400S.B drives to select OEMs, while product ramp is scheduled for the second half of this year. Pricing wasn’t unveiled.