IT/Datacenter & Super Computing - Page 8

CES 2015 -OCZ Storage Solutions displayed the Z-Drive 6000 NVMe SSD in their suite at CES 2015. The Z-Drive 6000 sports speeds of 3,000 MB/s for sequential read and 2,000 MB/s for sequential write workloads. Random reads weigh in at an outstanding 700,000 IOPS, and random writes are equally impressive at 175,000 IOPS. The Z-Drive 6000 will provide 1-3 DWPD, which is becoming the standard for most datacenter SSDs, largely due to increased density. The Z-Drive 6000 utilizes the NVMe interface, covered in detail in our Defining NVMe article.

The Z-Drive 6000 comes in capacities of 800GB, 1.6TB and 3.2TB in the small 2.5" 15mm form factor. The Z-Drive leverages the proven PMC-Sierra Princeton controller running OCZ-proprietary firmware. The Z-Drive 6000 is certified for NVMe specification 1.1b on the UNH-IOL integrator list. The drive also features all the normal enterprise trimmings, such as encryption and internal data redundancy.

The end of the SSD reveals a row of open slots that take advantage of the native linear airflow patterns inside the server. 2.5" PCIe SSDs use ExpressBay, a multi-protocol externally accessible storage slot that supports 2.5" or 3.5" devices compatible with the SFF-8639 connector. Standard drive bays are limited to 9 Watts of power, but ExpressBay bumps that up to 25 Watts, which is also the limit for the Z-Drive 6000. The Z-Drive also features optional lower power states. ExpressBay also provides additional airflow to dissipaten more heat. The unique airflow implementation for the Z-Drive 6000 will help to keep the drive cool and avoid any thermal throttling issues.

CES 2015 -Samsung has the advantage, for the time being, of being the only manufacturer shipping 3D NAND products. V-NAND is 3D NAND that achieves better density, performance, endurance, and power consumption, via vertical stacking of the NAND cells and CTF technology. This runs counter to the established norm of increasing density through NAND shrinks, and with good reason. Shrinks provide more density, but actually reduce endurance.

We have a more detailed analysis of V-NAND in The V-NAND Paradigm Shift article. Samsung has the 10nm class MLC NAND 16Gb and the 32-layer 128Gb TLC 3D V-NAND on display. The TLC (or 3bit) versions of V-NAND boost capacity, and also provide increased endurance in comparison to standard planar TLC NAND. Planar TLC has already made its way into the client and enterprise space despite the lower endurance, and 3D TLC V-NAND is on the way to the datacenter as well.

The 3D TLC V-NAND packages top out at 128Gb, and Intel has announced a move up to 256Gb. Samsung is also working on denser dies, but further details aren't available at this time. Current planar NAND designs feature a maximum density of 128Gbit per chip, but V-NAND is expected to enable up to 1Tb per chip by 2017. Toshiba also has 3D NAND on the roadmap, so the battle for 3D NAND supremacy is well underway.

CES 2015 -HDDs are evolving to address new challenges in the datacenter, and the Seagate Kinetic line offers a radical new way of improving performance and reducing TCO. Hyperscale customers are constantly looking for refined systems to lower operating costs, and new data storage methods to address the massive influx of data.

Kinetic drives interact with an open-source Seagate-developed API that eschews normal filesystem implementations in favor of more robust Key/Value Object storage. The Kinetic platform also dramatically reduces host overhead and removes CPU processing from the majority of tasks.

The Kinetic drives are physically similar to normal HDDs, but connect via a dual Ethernet connection. This provides multipath and fail-over capabilities. The drives can also perform disk-to-disk data migration and other tasks independently.

Storage Visions 2015 -Mike Chen from Marvell stopped by the TweakTown booth at Storage Visions 2015 to display the Altaplus controller along with a new SSD that has an integrated controller on the NAND package. NVMe has several performance advantages, but also enables low power operation modes particularly well-suited for mobile applications. Marvell is delivering both PCIe 2.0 and 3.0 SSD controllers that feature robust LDPC error correction technology.

There are multiple lengths in the M.2 standard, and here we can see the difference in size between the different solutions.

Using a standard SD card for scale we can observe the amazingly small size of this NAND package. What makes this solution unique is the fact that it is actually a fully functional SSD. The controller is embedded into the NAND chip, which allows for ultra-dense configurations. This small SSD contains 128GB of Toshiba flash.

SanDisk works closely with the IT team to ensure that upgrades are successfully migrated in a safe and secure manner. The IT department schedules the machines for pickup, and SanDisk performs the actual data migration and hardware installation to ensure a worry-free transition to a faster, more reliable, and lower cost SSD solution.

Mangstor has a blazing fast enterprise PCIe SSD hiding in plain sight. The MX6000 comes in both HHHL and FHHL form factors, and features 2TB and 2.7TB of eMLC NAND, respectively. With 1 million random read IOPS and 600,000 random write IOPS the MX6000 lays claim to the title of the fastest PCIe SSD in the world. Thee MX6000 also provides protection from host power loss with a unique solution.

Typical SSDs have a volatile DRAM cache, which requires power-fail circuitry and capacitors to protect the cache. The MX6000 utilizes a next-generation 64MB MRAM cache from Everspin, which provides built-in write persistence for all data, simplifying design and firmware. The MX6000 boasts a beast of an FPGA with 100 cores running at 500MHz to manage the flash. The card utilizes eMLC to provide a robust 8-10 DWPD threshold that will satisfy the most demanding workloads.

Mangstor is already providing PCIe SSDs to OEMs, but they are also expanding to SME/SMB environments and the branded market. Look to these pages soon for competitive performance analysis of the product alongside other leading solutions in the PCIe SSD category of our IT/Datacenter section.

Storage Visions 2015 - At the SATA-IO booth at Storage Visions an HGST Ultrastar He8 HDD is on display. The new high capacity drives from HGST are utilizing helium, with their HelioSeal technology, to reduce air resistance and vibration. This allows them to cram more platters into the standard 3.5" form factor. The He8 features the same 7stac architecture as its predecessor, the Ultrastar He6 (review here). This architecture utilizes 7 platters and 14 heads.

The net benefit is 33% more capacity with a decrease of 23% for idle power consumption. The He8 also offers 44% better Watts per TB. The drives also feature Instant Secure Erase for security and Rebuild Assist to speed RAID recovery tasks.

PMC-Sierra has joined the OpenPOWER Foundation, which is dedicated to developing advanced server, networking, storage and acceleration technology, along with open source software. The open source movement is radically altering the design of hyperscale and cloud data centers by providing more efficiency at lower cost.

The OpenPOWER group makes POWER hardware and software available to open development for the first time, as well as making POWER intellectual property licensable to others, greatly expanding the ecosystem of innovators on the platform. PMC will leverage their deep knowledge of SAS and NVMe controllers to help develop new I/O interfaces by sponsoring a new I/O workgroup, along with IBM, Emulex, QLogic and Mellanox.

"Participating in the I/O workgroup with IBM and integrating our products into the OpenPOWER platform ensures that our customers have access to the latest cloud and big data storage technology," said Kurt Chan, vice president of storage technology and strategy for PMC's Enterprise Storage Division. "As a market leader in SAS and NVMe controllers, working with the industry to define new I/O interfaces and being at the forefront of new developments enables PMC to deliver the most advanced products for open architectures."

Crossbar has recently made some encouraging gains in the path to commercializing 3D RRAM by 2016. 3D Resistive RAM (RRAM) promises to break the barriers associated with the reduced endurance of NAND as the lithography shrinks. While the best-in-class SLC NAND can pull off 100,000 write-erase cycles, 3D RRAM can deliver an exponential gain to a mind-boggling 100 million write cycles. 3D RRAM is also denser, up to 10X per chip compared to NAND, and provides speeds up to 20 times that of flash. As an added bonus, it draws less power. Seems to be too good to be true, right? Basically unlimited endurance, faster performance, lower power consumption, and it's all wrapped up in one amazingly dense 1TB chip the size of a postage stamp? Providing a product with the performance of RAM, but the persistence of NAND, is the Holy Grail. But is it feasible?

Crossbar believes they are on the cusp of delivering this almost too good to be true product. Crossbar outlined some of the latest advancements at the 2014 International Electron Devices Meeting. Crossbar has patented their Field Assisted Superlinear Threshold Selector, which overcomes the limitations of a sneak path current issue. Sneak path current disrupts the reading of data from RRAM's cells. By eliminating the problem Crossbar has made a huge breakthrough that will see wearable products entering the market in 2016, at least by their estimates, and SSDs roughly 18 months after. We would assume they mean late 2016.

Bringing a new memory technology to market is fraught with obstacles. Reliability comes first, but then there has to be a method of producing the product with decent yields on a cost-effective basis. Even the most promising of storage products isn't going to be successful if it cannot be productized at a reasonable cost. SSDs still fall to the venerable HDD in terms of cost-per-GB, even as prices continue to decline. Competing with NAND is going to be tough as RRAM comes out of the gate. NAND is a proven, mature, and refined technology that can deliver cost-competitive products. One positive aspect is that RRAM is completely compatible with standard manufacturing techniques employed in NAND fabrication, which should speed manufacturing and reduce initial product investments.

Toshiba has announced the release of their latest datacenter HDD, the 6TB MG04 series. The MG04 comes in SAS and SATA flavors and also touts a 30% increase in the sustained data rate. The models also feature Toshiba's persistent write cache technology. This technology persists data to the storage medium by utilizing the rotation of the disk platters during a power loss event to generate enough power to flush the data. This power loss protection technique lends another layer of protection for key business-critical storage systems.

The MG04 spins at 7,200 RPM to deliver nearline-class seek performance, and the increased storage density delivers 50% better power efficiency, on a watts-per-TB basis, than previous 4TB models. The drives use 4K native and 512e sector lengths, and models are available with ISE (Instant Secure Erase) functionality. The SAS drives also sport a 12Gb/s connection for compatibility with the latest hardware. The competition in the HDD arena is heating up as we move to denser HDD storage solutions, and the continued advances in HDD technology compliment Toshiba's vast flash-based product portfolio.

Toshiba currently had topped out at 5TB with the MG04 series, and the inclusion of the 6TB model places them on equal footing with their main competitors. The new drives will begin sampling to OEM customers in Q1 2015. For the latest competitive performance analysis of the datacenter HDD segment head to our HDD category in the IT/Datacenter section.