Seagate's first Pulsar SSDs ready to blast the enterprise

We first heard of Seagate's plans to enter the SSD market way back in mid 2007 and then again in 2008. Here we are in the final days of 2009 and guess what: the first Seagate SSD has been announced. Unfortunately, Seagate's 2.5-inch SATA Pulsar SSD targets the raised-floor crowd locked away in your corporate data center, not you directly. The SLC-based Pulsar tops out at 200GB and claims a peak performance of 30,000 read IOPS and 25,000 write IOPS and a 240MBps sequential read and 200MBps sequential write -- damn quick compared to Samsung's enterprise-class SSDs released last year clocking 100MBps sequential reads and 80MBps writes. Hopefully, we'll see Seagate push into the consumer sector once they finish milking corporate IT budgets, or what's left of 'em.

[Wwhat Posted Dec 8th 2009 5:21AM]

As long as they don't bake their own chips can they really compete?

[Joe Geronimo Posted Dec 8th 2009 7:46AM]

@Wwhat mmm baked chips

[Nitesh Posted Dec 8th 2009 8:13AM]

@Wwhat Yes, they can. You'll notice many SSD's that differ greatly in performance use the same Flash memory, but different controllers. Its the controller that appears to be the bottleneck now (well, that and SATA-II).

[Wwhat Posted Dec 8th 2009 7:09PM]

@Nitesh
Oh I didn't mean in terms of speed but in terms of economics, samsung has its own flahs, intel too, and seagate makes its own platters and magnetic heads, so it seems for HD manufacturers to move to SSD they would need to start to make the media too to not be outdone easily by the asian competition.
Although if they make their own controller they got something, but there is some competition there too with more SSD experience, and in that field it might be more sensible (economically) to sell the controllers instead of complete devices, as long as the competition has access to cheaper flash.
On the other hand, if they announce they are in the market to buy a few billion worth of flash then the flashmakers will I think try to out-offer eachother for a deal like that, both because they have an assured sale but they also prevent the competition from getting that sale.

[NikAmi Posted Dec 8th 2009 7:48AM]

sure they can...a lot of the perfomance increases can be found in software and design differences. That coupled with the fact that most SSD makers source their chips from 3rd parties makes it quite easy for anyone to be a competitor in the SSD marketplace.

[victoria Posted Dec 8th 2009 7:51AM]

Yep, Seagate entered the SSD market via NAND flash drives. I think this is a good way of entering the SSD market and get their "feet wet" so to say. But I guess it's too early for consumers to buy SSDs since they are quite expensive. See complete Pulsar specs here: http://bit.ly/Seagate-Pulsar-specs

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 8th 2009 9:19AM]

Damn! I just bought a Crucial. Oh well...

[wolstat Posted Dec 8th 2009 11:03AM]

so an SSD seems to be a spacecraft of some kind, cool!

[artshark Posted Dec 8th 2009 11:28AM]

level of want is high!

[Evoss Posted Dec 8th 2009 4:42PM]

This looks really but REALLY NICE !!

[Pies Posted Dec 20th 2009 7:24AM]

Is there _any_ difference between corporate and consumer products except for price?