IT/Datacenter & Super Computing - Page 6

OCZ Storage Solutions is leveraging their homegrown Barefoot 3 controller and firmware in tandem with Toshiba A19nm NAND for the new Sabre 1000 SSD Series. OCZ's move to their own proprietary SSD controller is a big step that provides them with tremendous flexibility to tailor their products for different segments. The OCZ Sabre 1000 is geared for read-intensive workloads in high-volume hyperscale deployments.

The Sabre 1000 comes in capacities of 240, 480, and 960GB, and provides an economical alternative for administrators with light and mixed workloads. The SSD features PFM+ (Power Failure Management Plus) that protects data in the event of host power loss. Another key feature is the value-added StoragePeak 1000 SSD management system. This friendly and easy-to-use GUI allows central monitoring and management of the SSD.

Performance varies based upon capacity, with top random read/write speeds weighing in at 98,000/23,000 IOPS. Sequential speed is also impressive at 550/515 MB/s read/write. The Sabre 1000 is geared for read-intensive applications such as read cache and indexing, VOD (Video On Demand), VDI, media streaming, and cloud infrastructures. We recently put the latest OCZ enterprise SSD through the paces in our OCZ Intrepid 3600 Enterprise SSD Review. Head to our IT/Datacenter section to view our library of competitive performance analysis of other leading enterprise SSDs.

Supercomputing 2014: In the world of HPC (High-Performance Computing) the bleeding edge is always the preferred route to realize insane computational power. HMC (Hybrid Memory Cubes) are the next big thing, and offer plenty of performance advantages over existing DRAM. The current generation of HMC technology sips power and provides more density and performance than existing memory technology. With 15 times the performance, 90 percent less space, and 70 percent less power consumption, it is easy to see why industry leaders are touting the advantages of HMC. The key to HMC adoption, as with any new technology, lies in the committees that establish industry-standard interface specifications.

The HMCC (Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium) was founded by Micron, Altera, Open-Silicon, Samsung and Xilinx in 2011 and has grown to more than 150 members. At Supercomputing 2014 the HMCC has announced the finalization and public availability of the HMCC 2.0 specification.

The new specification increases speed from 15Gb/s to 30Gb/s and migrates the associated channel model from short reach (SR) to very short reach (VSR). VSR is key to the eventual fusion of HMC into the CPU. The path to faster data processing, as with storage, involves getting closer to the CPU. The future integration into the CPU will expand upon the tremendous performance advantages of HMC. Imagine an L2 cache with 100 times the capacity.

Supercomputing 2014: Intel and SGI combined their talents to create an HPC monster that touts 30 million IOPS of 4k random speed with 180GB/s of sequential throughput. Scaling storage performance and capacity in tandem is an ongoing challenge in the enterprise storage world, and old interfaces have been the primary culprit hampering these objectives. A diminishing point of returns is reached as more storage devices are added to the server, and performance begins to decline as latency increases. This is a particular pain point when utilizing RAID and HBA architectures in tandem with 2.5" SSDs.

Enter the PCIe SSD. Moving flash to the PCIe bus provides better performance scaling, but many initial revisions of PCIe SSDs leveraged existing standards, such as AHCI, for host communication. This leads to performance degradation and excessive CPU overhead as performance scales. As explained in our Defining NVMe article, NVMe is a new storage protocol designed specifically for non-volatile memory. A slew of architectural refinements combine to provide the best performance possible over the PCIe interface. Intel's DC P3700 (covered in-depth in our Intel DC P3700 1.6TB NVMe Enterprise Review) is one of the fastest PCIe SSDs available, and the combination of NVMe and consistent performance provide enhanced scalability when deploying multiple units.

Intel and SGI decided to push the performance envelope by integrating a whopping 64 of the DC P3700's into a 32-socket server to test the limits of NVME scaling. The results are quite impressive, and the modified SGI UV 300H SAP HANA server surpassed 30 million IOPS in 4k random testing. Perhaps the most impressive aspect is the linear performance scaling in the graphic above. The solid blue lines denote the IOPS performance curve as more P3700's were added, and the dotted blue line is a trend line illustrating a theoretical linear progression. From the results we can see that the SGI beast barely deviates from the perfect scaling trend line. The throughput, tested with 128k sequential blocks, topped out just shy of 180 GB/s.

Supercomputing 2014: Intel has announced a new Xeon Phi processor, code-named Knights Hill, at Supercomputing 2014. The Xeon Phi co-processors are the offspring of the Larabee project, and Intel has improved performance and inter-operability with each successive product generation. Knights Hill is a key advancement for Intel in the HPC (High-Performance Computing) market, and will leverage a 10nm process and integrate Intel's Omni-Path Fabric technology.

The Knights product series competes directly with NVIDIA in the supercomputing market, and Knights Hill is a natural progression of the product line which will enhance performance scaling and bandwidth while simultaneously reducing power consumption.

Knights Landing features the Intel Silvermont Architecture that is designed specifically for HPC applications. The architecture significantly boosts single thread performance by 3X in comparison to the Knights Corner product. The on-package memory tops out at 16GB and offers amazing bandwidth, over 5x more than DDR4. This stacked memory design also significantly reduces the power consumption of the memory subsystem by as much as 5X.

Supercomputing 2014: Huawei announced their new FusionServer X6800 products at Supercomputing 2014. The new FusionServer X6800 supports a variety of high-density nodes in a 4U chassis, which provides flexibility for different configurations of compute, storage, and GPU acceleration within the same server. The X6800 also supports the latest SSD configurations and offers two to four GE ports or two 10Gbe ports.

Huawei also announced a new liquid-cooled version of the FusionServer E9000. This blade server features cutting-edge heat dissipation technology in a 12U enclosure. This liquid-cooled behemoth features 16 slots and redundant power supplies, along with 40GBe or InfiniBand FDR (56G). The platform is built upon a scalable architecture that allows for dual or quad CPU nodes. Huawei will also be demonstrating the RH5885H V3 server, a standard 4U rack server that supports four Intel E7-4800 v2 processors, and the RH2288 V3, a dual socket 2U server rack that supports Intel E5-2600 v3 processors.

Foremay, Inc. has announced their new 4TB and 8TB SATA 6Gb/s SSDs. SATA SSDs are one of the hottest growth segments in the datacenter, and more capacity is always welcome. There are SAS SSDs with up to 4TB of capacity, such as the Sandisk Optimus MAX, but the introdcution of a high-capacity SATA SSD will broaden the use-case for high-capacity SSDs. Foremay focuses on the OEM market, and the new SSDs are geared for servers and ruggedized applications. The EC188 and SC199 features a random read/write speed of 100K/100K, and sequential read/write speeds of 500/500 MB/s.

The SSDs feature AES-256 encryption and are TCG Opal 2.0 compliant and feature military-grade secure erase functionality. The new SSDs are designed for high heat environments to provide reliability in enterprise and industrial applications. Foremay SSDs are custom built, and can also equipped with a supercapacitor to provide power loss protection. There simply aren't any SSD controllers on the market to address that much flash, so this is likely to be a custom solution with a bridge device akin to the Intelliprop Hydra SATA bridge we evaluated recently.

OCZ Storage Solutions has just announced the release of their Vertex 460A. The original Vertex series has been a stellar product with a history that spans back to the original version with the first-gen Indilinx Barefoot controller. The new version leverages Toshiba's latest A19 MLC NAND flash. The A19nm process geometry is the second generation of Toshiba 19nm MLC. The new version also features the Barefoot 3 controller and sequential speeds of 545/525 MB/s read/write (480GB model). Random speeds also top out at 95,000/90,000 random read/write IOPS, respectively, but performance varies depending upon capacity, as noted in the graphic below.

The Vertex 460A features an endurance rating of 20GB of writes for the three-year warranty period. OCZ is providing their new ShieldPlus warranty, which provides advance shipping and covers return shipping costs if there is the need for an RMA. The new Vertex also features Acronis True Image for cloning an existing installation to the SSD, and a 3.5" desktop adaptor. OCZ recently launched a new online shop, and we expect units to be available there shortly.

The new Vertex comes in 120, 240, and 480GB capacities and also offers toll-free tech support. Chris put the original Vertex 460 through the testing gauntlet, and the SSD received the TweakTown Editor's Choice Award. The switch to the newer process shouldn't yield huge variations in performance, as a matter of fact the specifications are very similar. Head over to the OCZ Vertex 460 240GB SSD Review for a closer look at the previous model, which should be indicative of performance experienced with the new model.

Supermicro has announced world-record setting performance in the STAC-N1 and STAC-A2 benchmarks. Supermicro's 3rd generation Hyper-Speed platform, in tandem with the Intel Xeon Phi co-processor, delivered the record-setting results from an incredibly slim 1U server. The results indicate a propensity for superior performance in HFT (high Frequency Trading) applications, which crave low latency and high performance. Performance consistency is a big key to delivering predictable and sustainable QoS for HFT applications. The Hyper-Speed platform nailed key requirements with the lowest mean latency, max latency, and jitter. The slim 1U platforms can be deployed with up to 3 Intel Xeon Phi co-processors, expanding the use-case for even more demanding workloads.

The Hyper-Speed Ultra provides an impressive stable of connectivity with 10 2.5" drive bays, 8 12Gb/s SAS 3 ports, 2 SATA 6Gb/s ports, and a range of PCIe connections. The platform also accepts 2 NVMe drives via the AOC-URN2-i2XT. The system is powered by dual E5-2643 v3 Haswell processors. Supermicro has several high-performance systems available, and the pending release of their ULLtraDIMM-enabled platforms may increase performance beyond their own world record. 3

We recently had a chance to take a Supermicro development system for a spin in our Sandisk ULLtraDIMM DDR3 400GB SSD Enterprise Review. We also feature full evaluations of a number of Supermicro and competing platforms in the Motherboard and Server categories of our IT/Datacenter section.

Power consumption is the highest ongoing expense in the datacenter, and for giants like Facebook it can easily add up to billions of dollars per year. One of the most obvious sources of power consumption spawns from cooling costs. Power consumption generates heat, and Facebook has grabbed the low-hanging fruit by moving to open-air datacenter designs that radically reduce cooling requirements. Now Facebook has turned their attention to UPS systems for the next layer of power savings. Reducing overall power consumption is key because it also incurs the expense of power backup. During a power loss event the systems automatically fall back to massive UPS systems that provide enough power, typically 90 seconds worth, to cover the gap until backup generators come online. Facebook has already altered UPS design by migrating from large central UPS systems to seven-foot tall server cabinets interspersed throughout the datacenter.

Today these massive power backup systems rely upon lead-acid batteries, but now Facebook is experimenting with the same type of lithium-ion batteries found in today's latest electric vehicles. The long term cost of maintenance is lower for lithium-ion batteries, and they also deliver more power in a smaller footprint. Facebook is experimenting with designs that embed lithium-on batteries at the rack level. Two batteries will slide into each rack and provide UPS protection. This design also reduces the chance of UPS failure. If a standard centralized UPS fails the entire datacenter can go down. With rack-level battery backups, only small groups of servers would be effected by individual failures.

Recent advances in lithium-ion battery technology have been fueled by electric car development. Vehicles like the Volt, Tesla, and Leaf, have ushered in advanced battery technology and also lowered the overall cost. Now that cost of Li-on batteries has fallen they have become a sensible alternative for UPS applications in massive datacenters. Facebook is integrating their new designs into their Open Compute initiative, which might serve to expand the widespread use of Lithium-ion in the datacenter. There is no word on how increased demand would affect the overall pricing.

Open Server Summit 2014 focuses on next-generation server designs that leverage industry-standard hardware and open-source software. The show is a great place to view future server technology, which makes it the perfect venue for displaying the Diablo MCS (Memory Channel Storage) architecture at work on the Sandisk ULLtraDIMM. The Sandisk ULLtraDIMM DDR3 SSD brings latency as low as five microseconds by sidestepping the traditional storage stack, and communicating via the DDR3 bus. This reduces cabling, complexity, and components required for typical storage deployments.

The slim form factor, which takes advantage of the existing memory subsystem, will enable radical new server designs, particularly in the blade and microserver segment. The hardware consists of a JEDEC-compliant ULLtraDIMM that presents itself as a block storage device with 200 or 400GB of capacity. The ULLtraDIMM utilizes two Marvell 88SS9187 controllers running the Guardian Technology Platform to increase endurance and reliability. This tandem delivers random read/write performance of 140,000/40,000 IOPS, and sequential read/write speeds up to 880/600 MB/s. Ten DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day) of endurance, and a five-year warranty (or TBW) are provided by Sandisk 19nm eMLC NAND.

The real genius of the ULLtraDIMM design is its enhanced parallelism. Stacking several devices in parallel unlocks key performance advantages that will challenge even the fastest datacenter-class PCIe SSDs. We recently had a chance to take an in-depth look at the ULLtraDIMM and post our independent third party testing results in the Sandisk ULLtraDIMM DDR3 400GB SSD Enterprise Review. Head over to the PCIe category in our IT/Datacenter section for a look at competing PCIe devices.

Lately HDDs aren't gaining in capacity as quickly due to the limitations of PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording). PMR stores magnetic bits of data vertically, allowing manufacturers to cram more data onto the HDD's platters, which provides more density than the previous horizontal method. Every new technology has its limits, and PMR has nearly reached the end of its evolutionary cycle. Now manufacturers are turning to HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording) to increase density. HAMR uses a small laser to heat the surface of the platter to 800 degrees Fahrenheit before data is written. The laser is incredibly small and embedded into the drive's write head, and the small heated surface area cools back down in under a nanosecond.

Heat alters the magnetic properties of the disk for this nanosecond in time, and removes or reduces the superparamagnetic effect while data is written. This process allows for exponential gains in density, and HAMR drives with up to 20TB of storage are on the horizon. While this technology sounds a bit far-fetched, working development drives have already been displayed. With any new technology one of the immediate concerns is a lack of development tools. A team from A*STAR, led by Hongzhi Yang and the National University of Singapore, have designed a pump-probe laser to test HAMR devices. This allows accurate testing of temperature-dependent recording in localized regions without actually destroying the media. This is one more step on the path to creating affordable HAMR HDDs, and the first Seagate HAMR HDDs are projected to release in 2016 timeframe.

NVM Express has announced the new NVMe 1.2 specification, and many of the features are aligned to increase adoption in mobile designs, such as laptops and ultrathins. NVMe is a new storage protocol that provides amazing performance and low latency in comparison to legacy approaches, but while we have seen some amazingly fast enterprise SSDs hit our labs, NVMe hasn't quite made it to the consumer space. New power management features will allow NVMe SSDs to kick into lower power states, which will increase battery life for mobile applications.

Another new feature can also help to make SSDs more affordable. The NVMe specification now supports a host-based memory buffer. With the notable exception of SandForce devices, current SSDs use DRAM for caching. This extra DRAM component adds cost, draws more power, and takes up space on the SSD. NVMe 1.2 allows the SSD to use the computers RAM for SSD management, which means simpler, and cheaper, SSD designs. The smaller form factors will also lend themselves well to ultra-thins, 2-in-1's, and tablets. One neat aspect is that the SSD can request varying amounts of DRAM from the host system. This DRAM is typically utilized for translation tables for the FTL, but it isn't hard to imagine some uses for caching actual data in the future. Enhanced temperature management will keep the SSD from overheating, which is also a key feature in cramped laptops and ultra-thins. If the SSD reaches a high temperature it can simply throttle performance to cool down. These new features are welcome additions, and new NVMe SSDs will speed their way into your home computer or mobile device soon.

For enterprise applications, enhanced namespace management, a controller memory buffer, online firmware updates, and enhanced status reporting are on the menu. We will dive deeper into these features when new NVMe 1.2 SSDs hit our lab, but in the meantime take a look at our extensive coverage of the NVMe spec in our Defining NVMe Article. Also, visit our Intel SSD DC P3700 1.6TB PCIe NVMe Enterprise Review and Samsung XS1715 1.6TB 2.5-inch NVMe PCIe Enterprise SSD Review for an in-depth look at the extreme performance of NVMe datacenter storage solutions.

The Intel DC S3500 series competes in the price-sensitive segment and is geared for read-intensive and mixed workloads. The DC S3500 (evaluated here) doesn't sport quite the performance of its older brother, the DC S3700 (evaluated here), but provides plenty of performance and endurance for many workloads. Today Intel is announcing the release of 1.2 and 1.6TB variants, along with a new M.2 design. Expanded capacity is coupled with low power consumption that delivers reduced TCO. The DC S3500 has an active read power below 1.3 Watts. A sprinkling of other datacenter-specific technologies provide resiliency and a 0.3DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day) endurance limitation. End-to-end data protection, data redundancy technology, AES encryption, and power loss protection, ensure data safety.

Intel 20nm MLC NAND and a new 8-channel controller drive the DC S3500 models. Details are scant on the new Intel-proprietary controllers, but we will update readers as more information becomes available. We can expect to see the same consistent performance from the new drives, with a .5ms latency maximum for 99.9% of 4k random read IOPS. There are 10 capacity points available for the 2.5 drives, allowing users to tailor capacity for their specific needs. The high-capacity 2.5" variants feature up to 500/460 MB/s of sequential read/write speed and up to 65,000/18,500 random read/write IOPS. The larger pool of flash provides a bit more performance for the high-capacity variants, but the entire DC S3500 range features varying speeds based upon capacity.

The M.2 design relies upon the SATA interface and comes in 80, 120, and 340GB capacities. The performance of the M.2 variant seems tuned for slightly more random write speed than the similar capacity 2.5" variants, but slightly lower read speed. Intel is expecting the compact M.2 design to make a big splash in embedded applications, such as digital signage and slot machines. The M.2 design will also work well for server boot volumes. The ultra-dense design is particularly well-suited for blade and microserver designs, and some OEMs are in the process of developing systems with multiple M.2 connectors.

SMART Modular Technologies has announced the new M.2 SATA XR+ with SafeDATA power loss protection technology. SMART Modular Technologies, part of the larger SMART consortium of companies, is a privately-held company that has been in the electronics industry for over 25 years. Their products are usually confined to the OEM market, where they create custom designs for varying applications. The double-sided M.2 design is available in capacities from 32 to 512GB. These SSDs are designed to meet the needs of Tier 1 OEM customers and sport sequential read/write speeds of 540/320 MB/s.

SafeDATA consists of power loss detection and hold-up circuitry, in addition to advanced controller firmware, to flush all data to the underlying NAND in the event of a host power loss event. Power loss protection is a critical requirement in enterprise and embedded applications, and fusing that functionality onto a slim M.2 design opens up new applications for the dense design. The product is sampling now, and volume production begins in Q1 of 2015.

M.2 designs avail themselves well to several applications, and datacenter-centric models are appearing with more frequency. We expect to have samples of data-centric M.2 designs soon, and in the interim check out our library of competitive performance analysis of the latest and greatest enterprise storage technology in our IT/Datacenter section.

HGST led the way with 6TB drives by developing their HelioSeal technology, which fills the HDD with helium and seals the drive. This delivers a number of benefits, lower internal air resistance reduces flutter and allows use of thinner and lighter materials. With less air resistance the drive also doesn't have to work as hard to spin the platters, even while increasing the platter count to 7, thus producing radical reductions in power consumption. HGST is leveraging the benefits of HelioSeal technology to move forward with the new He8, an 8TB version of the previous-generation drive.

In a sign that 8TB drives will experience a rapid uptake, Aberdeen announced today they are integrating the new He8 into their AberNAS and storage server products. This will provide increased density for their customers and also tremendous reductions in power consumption. The He8 drive will deliver instant benefits and boost capacity of just one 4U rackmount up to 192TB. We took a deep-dive with the first commercially-available helium drive in our HGST Ultrastar He6 6TB Helium Enterprise HDD Review, and found it to deliver on its promises. Head to our IT/Datacenter section for more competitive performance analysis of leading enterprise HDDs and SSDs.

Seagate has announced their Kinetic HDD, which connects via dual Ethernet ports and leverages the Seagate Kinetic Open Storage platform. Seagate has developed an entire ecosystem to support the new approach, which removes the need for a dedicated storage tier. The goal is to reduce the price of infrastructure to realize a TCO reduction of 50%. The open-source Kinetic API utilizes object storage, which circumvents the hindrances of normal file system architectures. This removes the software stack and allows applications to communicate directly with the Kinetic HDD.

Kinetic HDDs reside in backplanes that have two embedded Ethernet connections for each drive. This provides a dual port active/active connection. The typical deployment then utilizes two 10Gbe Ethernet connections to communicate with the server. HDDs can also speak directly to each other, without going through the operating system, streamlining operations such as disk-to-disk replication and minimizing overall network traffic to the server. Ethernet is widely deployed and presents the ability to use existing infrastructure for IP-based management.

The Kinetic platform also provides performance benefits. Seagate has observed a 4X increase in random write speed, due to the lack of metadata and queuing processes from legacy filesystems and operating system interaction. The new 4TB Kinetic drive is available for customer qualification now, and general availability begins at the end of November. For the latest in enterprise HDD technology head to our IT/Datacenter section for in-depth competitive performance analysis of Seagate and other leading manufacturers latest HDDs.

Enmotus has announced the general availability of their FuzeDrive server software, which provides software-defined storage acceleration for server-side SSD and NVDIMM deployments, which are becoming more popular in clustered servers and hyper-converged architectures. FuzeDrive's MicroTiering storage algorithms load-balance data across devices, and allows the use of standard SSDs to provide seamless caching for server-side flash deployments.

Andy Mills from Enmotus demonstrated the actual use of FuzeDrive software for us at the 2014 Flash Memory Summit. FuzeDrive provides easy management capability integrated into the operating system's native file browsing tools. FuzeDrive also allows for file-pinning in the cache, which keeps desired data constantly in the SSD cache to deliver maximum performance acceleration for critical files. Users can also use a real-time at-a-glance visual mapping tool to monitor performance. FuzeDrive differentiates itself from caching solutions by providing low-impact acceleration that doesn't eat CPU cycles. In come configurations caching software can chew up to 50% of the host CPU cycles running cache management tables and algorithms, and also have limits on the amount of addressable flash capacity. Enmotus is currently working with a select number of solution and channel partners to make the technology available.

Marrying the capacity of HDDs with the performance of flash is one of the most common use-cases for server-side flash deployments, specifically because it can reduce network traffic, or even take the SAN out of the picture entirely. Samsung recently purchased Proximal Data to expand its base of technology, and other players in this space have already made significant investments in various caching/tiering software companies. It wouldn't be entirely surprising to see Enmotus acquired in the near future.

HGST has added another design win to the long list of FlashMAX design wins. StoneFly, a leading supplier of SAN systems, has announced integration of the HGST FlashMAX II into the flash-based version of their USS Hyper-Converged appliances. StoneFly's USS solution can be configured as iSCSI, Fibre Channel, or NAS (CIFS/SMB and NFS), and the hypervisors allow multiple VM's to run on a single physical host.

StoneFly runs all control logic as a software-based service on HGST FlashMAX II SSDs. The virtual storage controllers run on each cluster node to improve scalability and resilience. StoneFly USS appliances can begin with a single node configuration and then nodes can be added in increments as small as 2U (12 drive bays) to 4U (24 Drive bays). Each appliance can be scaled up to support a total of 256 drives per node. Cluster nodes and their expansion nodes can be seamlessly added one at a time with zero downtime. This provides a time to value deployment of under 30-minutes, with no disruption to ongoing operations.

The HGST FlashMAX II is a great fit for this type of deployment, we recently posted in-depth competitive performance analysis in our HGST FlashMAX II 2.2TB Enterprise PCIe SSD Review. One of the strongest features of the FlashMAX II lies in their enhanced software offerings that radically redefine typical expectations from a PCIe SSD. Advanced software features provide a host of new capabilities, which we cover in great detail in the article.

Memblaze has just announced their latest and greatest, the behemoth 8TB Eblaze4. Memblaze is one of the world's largest PCIe SSD suppliers, but their focus on the China market has kept them out of the limelight in North America. The release of the EBlaze4 continues the introduction of more Memblaze products into the North American and European markets. This PCIe SSD comes in the standard HHHL form factor and also is available in a 2.5" design. We recently took a close look at the PBLaze3L and found it to offer great performance and a wide variety of capacities to fit any environment.

The new EBlaze4 has a feature set geared specifically for SDS and hyperscale deployments. The EBlaze4 provides greater control through customization and programmability that manages the device down to a granular level. Users can tailor certain functions, such as garbage collection and wear leveling, to preferred settings, tying them closely to application requirements.

The EBlaze4 comes in 500, 700, and 900 Series and sports the NVMe interface. The 500 and 700 Series offer up to 3.6 and 3.2TB of capacity, respectively, and sequential speeds weighing in at 2.5/1.8 GBps read/write over a PCIe 3.0 x4 connection. The 500 Series offers 500,000/40,000 read/write IOPS, and the 700 series expands that to 500,000/150,000 read/write IOPS. The mammoth 900 Series brings a whopping 8.0TB onto a single device with blistering sequential speeds of 4.5/2.5 GB/s read/write. Yes, you read that right, 4.5 Gigabytes per second of read speed, easily the fastest on the market.

In many ways modern vehicles are much like rolling computers. Navigation and infotainment applications, such as 3D mapping, environmental reporting (e.g., infrastructure, traffic, meteorological) car radio, multimedia, satellite radio, E-call and voice recognition, and interaction with the drivers phone, are all handled via on-board computer systems. Just like any other computer these require storage, and much like typical computers the majority of these systems still rely upon HDDs. When the driver starts the vehicle a boot up process begins, and this can take a few moments as the drive spins up and delivers data to the on-board computer. There is a huge market for automotive-class HDDs that have enhanced vibration resistance and other features, such as expanded operating temperatures and humidity ranges, to tailor them for the mobile environment.

Micron aims to bring the same SSD benefits to vehicles with their new M500IT line. SSDs will bring nearly instantaneous boot up times to the vehicle, increase the response, and perhaps even enable other features that weren't previously possible with increasingly complex vehicle computer systems. SSDs also tolerate much more vibration and shock, and environmental factors aren't nearly as much of a concern.

It seems to be a no-brainer to bring SSDs into vehicles, and by utilizing AEX-Q100-compliant eMMC 5.0 memory in 60GB to 240GB capacities, Micron can keep costs low enough to attract auto manufacturers. The M500IT also includes several features we are accustomed to seeing on Micron's enterprise-class SSDs, such as hardware-based encryption, data-at-rest protection from power loss, and an adaptive thermal monitoring system to expand the thermal operating envelope. Microns Micron's eMMC products are fully managed NAND solutions with built-in controllers and industry-standard interfaces, simplifying hardware and software integration and streamlining the development and qualification process for designers.