IOPS
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Samsung's 512GB chip will give your phone PC-like storage
Samsung has begun mass production of the world's first 512GB embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS), meaning its flagship phones can now hold double what they could last year, when the company released its 256GB version. Phones with the new chips can store up to 130 10-minute UHD videos.
Plextor M5S SSD coming mid-July: healthy speeds starting at $99 for 64GB
The SSD market has finally reached the point where we can afford to be picky, but the M5S's blend of price and performance make it worth a look. It claims random reads / writes of up to 73k and 70k IOPS respectively, supported by Plextor's True Speed technology to deliver consistent rates even as the drive fills up, along with price tags of $99 for 64GB, $160 for 128GB and $299 for 256GB. The M5S has already been given the once-over by The SSD Review, which found nothing much to criticize other than the lack of a five-year warranty (as seen on the MS3) and overall gave it hearty recommendation -- check the More Coverage link for the full review.
Fusion-io SDK gives developers native memory access, keys to the NAND realm
Thought your SATA SSD chugged along real nice? Think again. Fusion-io has just released an SDK that will allow developers to bypass all the speed draining bottlenecks that rob NAND memory of its true potential (i.e. the kernel block I/O layer,) and tap directly into the memory itself. In fact, Fusion-io is so confident of its products abilities, it prefers to call them ioMemory Application Accelerators, rather than SSDs. The SDK allows developers native access to the ioMemory, meaning applications can benefit from the kind of hardware integration you might get from a proprietary platform. The principle has already been demonstrated earlier this year, when Fusion-io delivered one billion IOPS using this native access. The libraries and APIs are available now to registered members of its developer program, hit the more coverage link to sign up.
SanDisk Extreme SSD has 'mighty' mix of performance and support
SanDisk's new Extreme SSD sounded nice enough when it launched recently, but we weren't expecting anything too crazy -- just another 6Gbps SandForce-based drive that would compete on $-per-GB more than performance. As it turns out, that doesn't do it justice. StorageReview has shown that the unit actually beats the Intel 520 in some key real-world tests and delivers a "chart-topping" 4K random write speed of 88,324 IOPS. With the bonus of the low price-point -- starting at $190 for 120GB -- and the level of support from SanDisk, the Extreme SSD can now boast an Editor's Choice trophy. Click the source link for the full report.
Fusion-io breaks one billion IOPS barrier, pauses to congratulate itself
Let's get a little perspective, shall we? Corsair's Force Series 3 SSD -- a wholly awesome product in its own right -- is capable of hitting around 85,000 IOPS. On a good day. Fusion-io has been pushing the NAND storage envelope for years now, but even its recently-unveiled ioDrives deliver between 700,000 and 900,000 IOPS. Today, however, the company's pausing to pat itself squarely on the back -- and rightfully so. It managed to achieve one billion input and output operations per second in a technology demonstration conducted at DEMO Enterprise: An Evening of Innovation. We're told that it was during a preview of the company's latency reducing Auto Commit Memory (ACM) extension, part of the Fusion ioMemory subsystem, and that it's "rethinking how to provide powerful modern CPUs with the data they need through sophisticated software architectures." The demo utilized eight HP ProLiant DL370 servers, each equipped with eight ioDrive2 Duos, to break the one billion IOP barrier when transferring 64 byte data packets. 'Course, that'd probably cost you a few dozen years of work if you were to buy such a setup yourself, but hey -- at least someone's working to eliminate the mechanical drive sooner rather than later, right?
Open your IOPS to ioDrive's next-gen SSDs
We're ripe for an ioRefresh and thankfully here it is: the ioDrive2 and ioDrive2 Duo will be out from November, bringing hugely faster speeds at a much lower dollar-per-gig compared to their predecessors. The single-level cell version of the next-gen Duo (depicted above) will deliver 700,000 read IOPS, 900,000 write IOPS and a 3GB/s bandwidth that could possibly surpass OCZ's Z-Drive R4. Prices start at $6,000 and top out at something too ridiculous to mention for a maximum 2.4TB of storage. But you're an enterprise, remember, so at least try to haggle before you settle for a cheaper alternative. Full PR after the break.
Corsair's speedy, flaming red Force GT SSD goes on sale this month for $149 and up
Corsair's Force GT solid-state drives caught our eye earlier this year, and their fire engine-red shells were only half the reason. These bad boys also promise up to 85,000 random write IOPS and are rated for impressive read / write speeds of 550 MBps and 525 MBps -- a shade higher than the specs being bandied-about when Corsair showed it off back in March. The drive also supports SATA 3, is backward-compatible with SATA 2, and ships with a 3.5-inch adapter that'll work with both desktops and laptops. Look for it this month in two sizes: 60GB ($149) and 120GB ($279). No word, alas, on the 240GB version that was strutting its stuff on the show floor in Hanover, Germany. PR after the break.
OCZ unveils Agility 3 and Solid 3 SSDs for thrifty speedsters
Now that OCZ has shifted its corporate focus away from the DRAM market, the company has begun deepening its lineup of solid state drives with two new additions: the Agility 3 and Solid 3. The pair of 2.5-inch SSDs, announced today, run on the SATA III 6Gbps interface (unlike their SATA II predecessors) and come strapped with a SandForce SF-2200 processor that allows for some pretty speedy performance. The Agility 3 boasts a maximum read rate of 525MBps, a write speed of 500MBps and can crank it up to 60,000 IOPS. The Solid 3 ain't no slouch, either, with a 500MBps read rate, 450MBps writing capabilities and a max IOPS of 20,000. Granted, they won't deliver quite the same punch as the Vertex 3 Pro, but they also won't cost you quite as much. On the high end of the price spectrum is the 240GB Agility 3, at $480, with the 60GB and 120GB versions priced at $135 and $240, respectively. The Solid 3, meanwhile, is available in both 60GB ($130) and 120GB ($230). Not exactly chump change, but still cheaper than OCZ's heavier hitters. Hit the source links for more details.
Intel's 25nm solid state drives boast huge capacity, improved reliability, four times longer life?
Solid state storage is maturing rapidly, as you can see on this allegedly leaked slide, but AnandTech reports that the improvements aren't all about price per gigabyte -- the 25nm successor to Intel's X25-M G2 is shaping up to be one killer drive. In addition to increasing capacity to 600GB for a 2.5-incher and 300GB for a 1.8-inch size, the publication reports that the Postville Refresh will bring up to 40,000 IOPS in random 4K writes, and transfer larger sequential files with up-to-250MB/s reads and 170MB/s writes. To put that in context, they should be competitive with today's very best SandForce SF-1200 drives, and hopefully trounce them on price. More impressive (if true), however, is that these new Intel X25-M G3 units are built to last: they're reportedly able to transfer at least 30TB before they give up the ghost, and have a "power safe write cache" feature that may keep errant power outages from prematurely conking them out. We don't exactly expect OCZ, Corsair, Mushkin and Crucial to sit around while Intel revolutionizes the market, though -- even if Intel's 25nm plant only benefits Intel, smaller die sizes will help solid state storage companies across the board.
OCZ bids for solid state throne with new Vertex 2 and Agility 2 SSDs
For the past nine months, Intel's X25-M G2 has been the solid state drive to beat, and manufacture as it might, rival OCZ hasn't been able to mass produce a SSD capable of matching its fantastic all-around performance. The original Vertex 2 Pro might have done the trick, but the company scrapped it after the speedy SandForce SF-1500 controller was found wanting, and only 5,000 of the 270MB / sec, 15,000 IOPS drives were ever produced. But now, OCZ's back with SandForce's cheaper SF-1200 chip, and surprise of surprises, the drives it power are even faster -- at least on paper -- than before. The new Vertex 2 and Agility 2 SSDs boast maximum sequential read speeds of 285MB / sec and 275MB / sec writes, and can perform those all-important 4K random writes at up to 50,000 IOPS on a Vertex, or a very respectable 10,000 IOPS for the budget Agility line. The company expects both drives to ship in the next few weeks in usable capacities of 50GB, 100GB and 200GB (provisioning an extra 14GB of overhead for each 50GB of storage) with 400GB SSDs planned further down the road. Now then, OCZ, how about that price tag? Update: Though we believe Intel's X25-M G2 is still considered the front-runner in the consumer space, it is worth noting that OCZ's new SSDs still have catching up to do in order to match the superb numbers generated by the more expensive enthusiast drive, the Crucial RealSSD C300. We'll have to see which incumbent OCZ is actually competing with (if not both) when it announces price points. [Thanks, SSD!]
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.
Video: Micron's Washington PCIe prototype SSD card is wicked quick
Up until now, Fusion-io's ioDrive has pretty much put every other SSD-on-a-PCIe-card to shame in terms of sheer performance, but it just might be looking at its first formidable competitor in the Micron Washington. The prototype device was recently showcased on video (posted after the break), and while we're not told how capacious it is, it is understood to be using 64-bit SLC NAND chips. When placed in a Xeon-powered server, the unit is able to achieve 150,000 to 160,000 random write IOPS with a bandwidth of 800MB/sec per card. Micron is convinced that it can reach a bandwidth of 1GB/sec and 200,000 IOPS with this technology, though Fusion-io's CTO proclaims that users can achieve "over 6GB per second" when using eight of its ioDrives in conjunction. Of course, the aforementioned ioDrive is actually shipping, whereas this elusive Washington doodad won't see commercial light until at least 2010.[Via The Register, thanks Vik]
Texas Memory breaks records, budgets with blisteringly fast RamSan-440 storage device
Texas Memory has been around longer than most of you readers have been alive (or so we're told by our resident omniscient overlord), but it's been quite awhile since it was talked about freely in the same breath as WD, Fujitsu, Samsung, et al. Now, however, the company is making the rounds once more thanks to its "record setting" RamSan-440, which provides between 256GB and 512GB of RAM-based SSD storage, 600,000 IOPS, 4,500MB/sec random sustained external throughput and latency under 15-microseconds. The entire rig arrives in a 90-pound 4U rack-mount enclosure and claims to be "the first SSD to use RAIDed NAND flash memory modules for data backup." Chances are, you were already bracing to hear a pretty ludicrous figure when it comes to pricing, but $150,000 for the 256GB edition and $275,000 for the 512GB iteration? Please -- we'll take a Lightning GT, thanks.[Via DailyTech]
SNT's IOPS in-dash PC
Distraction-devoted drivers can look forward to SNT's IOPS in-dash car PC, which will be unveiled later this week at Cebit, along with some hardware deets. Right now we can tell you that it runs Windows XP, has a 7-inch main touch screen interface, gives you internet access with HSDPA, connects to Bluetooth devices, and streams live video from your rear bumper (great for more perpendicular-inclined parallel parkers). For drivers in Korea who can actually use the technology (tear, sniff), the IOPS unit can not only play live T-DMB programming, but also records shows on its hard drive for later viewing, and can even burn them to a disc. A price hasn't been announced yet, but anyone who drops cash on this won't have to suffer a boring TV-less or web-less drive again.[Via Navigadget]
iOPS unveils DMB-equipped N7 NEO navigation system
It looks like iOPS' X11 wasn't the only showstopper at the firm's modest CES booth, as the sexy N7 NEO caught more than a few glimpses with it's sleek, metallic frame and sharp, 7-inch LCD. This NAV sports a 800 x 480 resolution, dual-core CPU (saywha?), "dual touch sensor pad LED light," SiRF Star III GPS module, FM radio tuner, games / car diary manager, SD card reader, wireless remote, and even a rear view camera option. Built on Windows CE 4.2, you'll also find MP3, movie, and photo playback functions, not to mention the MS Office viewing capabilities and turn-by-turn directions. While there's no official word on pricing, we can't envision such a well appointed unit coming in cheap, but you can find out for certain when this lands next month.
iOPS mimics the mini, showcases diminutive X11 PMP
You won't color us surprised to find that another Asian company has knocked off one of Apple's products, and we certainly aren't shocked that this time around it's iOPS (again). The firm's X11 is crafted from white or graphite aluminum, comes in at just 9-millimeters thick, and boasts a very, very familiar click wheel mechanism. Regardless, this PMP offers up 1/2/4GB capacities, and features a 1.3-inch color LCD, rechargeable Li-ion battery, JPEG / text viewer, FM radio tuner, built-in equalizer, USB 2.0 connectivity, and upgradeable firmware. On the audio front, it supports MP3, WMA, and OGG music files, while it plays nice with AVI, MPEG4, DivX, XviD, and WMV video files, and although we aren't certain of how much coinage this thing will require (if it actually makes it to market, that is), this looks like a very functional alternative to Apple's rendition if you get the itch to import.
iOPS reveals BlueQ 4GB DAP
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then it seems like Korean manufacturer iOPS has mad love for almost all of the major DAP makers on the market. Having already taken design cues from Samsung's YP-U1 and Apple's iPod mini -- they actually got sued for that one -- it looks like the company now has its sights set on the iRiver Clix with its latest offering, the BlueQ. Formerly known as the Q18, this model sports a 1.8-inch, 262,000-color screen, up to 4GB of flash storage capacity, and most impressively, Bluetooth support for wireless enjoyment of your tunes or 30fps vids. Expect to see the BlueQ in stores sometime in mid-August for an unknown price, but probably not in the US. Watch out Sandisk and Creative -- we hear that iOPS' engineers just got their hands on a Sansa and Zen V.[Via DAPreview, photo courtesy of popco]
