Aims to pave the way to market segment maturity

Mar 18, 2010 11:00 GMT  ·  By

Solid state drives are already famous for their very high read and write speeds compared with those of hard drives, even when using the same interface as these platter-based solutions. Out of all SSDs, however, there is one category that stands on top when it comes to both data-transfer rates and storage capacity, namely the SSDs designed to connect through the PCI Express interface. LSI has been working on one such device that has a bandwidth of 1,500MB/s sustained sequential I/O and 1,200MB/s sustained random I/O, regardless of the read/write mix. Now, the company has announced that this storage unit is sampling to OEMs.

The device is known as the LSISSS6200 PCIe SSS (solid state storage) solution and is meant for enterprise servers, where fast data access is crucial. It has a low latency and uses few CPU resources, even while delivering up to 200,000 4K sequential I/Os per second (IOPS), as well as 150,000 4K random IOPS. It has a storage capacity of up to 300GB and runs on just the power supplied by the PCI Express slot. Furthermore, the device makes use of industry-standard drivers that support all major operating systems and enable OEMs to achieve a faster time to market.

"Future customer requirements related to price, performance, power consumption and reliability align well with the benefits of solid-state storage," Jeff Janukowicz, research manager, Hard Disk Drive Components and Solid State Drives at IDC, said. "PCIe-based SSS solutions, such as the LSISSS6200, can reliably meet next-generation data center needs with an improved price-to-performance ratio compared to traditional storage solutions."

"The new LSISSS6200 card utilizes the industry's most widely deployed software stack to deliver an enterprise-capable, drop-in storage solution," Steve Fingerhut, senior director of marketing, Storage Components Division, LSI, explained. "Providing customers with a new tier of storage between system memory and low-cost disk drives, without sacrificing reliability or simplicity, PCIe-based SSS solutions represent the next evolution in storage architectures for market segments requiring extreme performance."

There is no word on when the device will actually be released on the market.