Specifications, Pricing and Availability

The offloaded architecture allows the WarpDrive to handle all processing onboard the device itself. This is important as some other PCIe solutions require the host computer to handle the wear leveling and other flash management tasks. This can lead to rising system requirements over time and creates a need for high-end CPU processors to provide full performance.

One of the greatest aspects of utilizing flash solutions in virtualized environments is the increase in VM density, up to 300% in some cases with the WarpDrive. With the proliferation of virtualized environments, every CPU cycle counts. The WarpDrive creates minimal intrusion into the server environment, keeping the CPU cycles and RAM free to handle other applications. Solutions that incur host overhead rob the system of potential density increases and do not lend themselves well to multi-card deployments.

Overall TCO of any SSD solution is far lower than a comparative HDD-based solution, and this holds true with the WarpDrive. The increased density of the half-height half-length card sips power at 25W. This does not require any auxiliary power and helps to keep heat generation to a minimum.

The demanding workloads placed upon enterprise-class storage solutions require powerful flash management techniques, and this is where the SandForce processors shine. The DuraWrite feature enables data compression, which facilitates low write amplification as a result of writing less data physically to the NAND flash in relation to the host writes. Writing less data provides higher performance, lessens garbage collection requirements, and increases the endurance of the underlying NAND.

The SandForce IP also brings powerful ECC and CRC in conjunction with the RAISE feature to prevent, identify, and repair any data corruption. RAISE and its built-in parity are responsible for repairing the data if the ECC and CRC cannot, providing an extra layer of data security.

The BLP4-800 sports four SF-2582 controllers, and in conjunction with Toshiba Toggle eMLC NAND can deliver latency as low as 50 microseconds. The 800GB model features 214,000 4K read IOPS and 75,000 4K write IOPS. Total bandwidth with 256K sequential data tops out at 2GB/s in read and 1GB/s in write speed. There are five capacities available, with the 200 and 400 GB variants featuring SLC NAND. The 400, 800, and 1.6TB versions use eMLC NAND.