14 DAY TRIAL // After a long period of letting its rivals run rampant on the solid state drive market, Hitachi has finally decided to join the competition, at least on the enterprise front. However, it is unclear just how aggressive the company plans to be or even the exact date on which it seeks to actually make its push. While it has brought out a GST solid state drive at the Hitachi uValue 2010 convention in Tokyo, it completely refused to provide any sort of information on its performance and capacity.
Verily, the only things that are known about the storage device is what can be gleamed from looking at it. Regrettably, this makes the 2.5-inch form factor and the compatibility with SAS and FCAL (Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop) interfaces the only confirmed details. According to The Register, No capacities were given, though speculations seem to hint at three capacity points.
Depending on how Hitachi wants to play it, the SSD will have 64GB, 128GB and 256GB versions, or 128GB, 256GB or 512GB. This assumption came from the fact that the team behind the report counted eight dies on the exhibited device (the top cover was removed). Regardless, when it becomes available, the SSD will be used as a building block in disk drive arrays. Currently, STEC is the sole maker of FLAC SSDs (the ZeusIOPS line of 2.5 and 3.5-inch models), which means that Hitachi will become its rival in this market.
It is unknown whether the Hitachi GST uses SLC (single-level cell) or MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory chips, nor was Intel mentioned in any way at the exhibit, despite the fact that Hitachi is known to be collaborating with it on SSD development. Either way, end-users will simply have to settle for waiting and seeing what comes of this new product.