Lightning SSDs Provide Crazy Fast Speeds
Pliant's new Lightning line of SSDs provide super fast IOPS that seem... well, lightning fast.
Pliant Technology is claiming in this press release (PDF) that its first series of "lightning" solid state drives (SSD) uses proprietary ASICs to deliver more than twice the input/output operations per second (IOPS) than the fastest SSDs currently on the market. Without using any cache, the Lightning Enterprise Flash Drive (EFD) LS achieves near warp speed with 180,000 IOPS in a 3.5-inch form factor. The company's other Lightning SSD, the Enterprise Flash Drive LB, provides 140,000 IOPS in a 2.5-inch form factor.
Pliant said that the LS model will provide sustained read speeds of 525 MB/sec and write speeds of 340 MB/sec, whereas the smaller LB model offers 420 MB/sec read and 220 MB/sec write speeds. Both SSDs provide a "predictable performance profile" across enterprise workloads, with read/write mix varying from 90-percent/10-percent to 60-percent/40-percent, the company said. While removing the write cache feels like skydiving without a parachute, Pliant promises that the new design will eliminate data loss on power interruptions, and deliver consistent performance.
Pliant also claims that its Lightning SSDs offer unlimited writes, and will work without slowdown for at least five years. Designed around the standard 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch form factors, both drives can be easily integrated into existing Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) enterprise storage and server systems without the need for modifications. The 3.5-inch LS model offers 300 GB and 1250 GB versions; the 2.5-inch LB model only offers 150 GB of storage.
“The exceptional performance and reliability features of Lightning EFDs allow IT managers to address the most significant challenges they’re facing today, namely, keeping up with continually increasing storage demands with fixed budgets, limited data center floor space and the ever growing cost of power,” said Amyl Ahola, CEO of Pliant Technology. “Our Lightning EFDs will dramatically expand the capabilities of current and future enterprise computing systems in new and innovative ways, enabling IT managers to do more with less: deliver maximum performance with less power, lower cost and a smaller footprint.”
- Storage,
- Business Computing,
- Business,
- Business Storage,
- SSD ,
- Lightning ,
- Pliant ,
- EFD ,
- IOPS
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About time someone had the guts to pull this type of SSD off.
ib4 "can it play crysis?"
"The 3.5-inch LS model offers 300 GB and 1250 GB versions"
That is quite a lot of space for a SSD. Gotta love typos.... or is it
Finally some decent SSDs. All we need now are reasonable prices, perhaps 2-3GB per USD ?
And the price?
Give it a few years and SSDs are all we'll use anymore. The traditional magnetic platter drives will be relagated to large scale storage for backup, media servers and SANs.
Hopefully these are SATA-6G/SAS-6G since the current generation isn't capable of such speeds.
Give it a few years and SSDs are all we'll use anymore. The traditional magnetic platter drives will be relagated to large scale storage for backup, media servers and SANs.
sounds familiar... something about multi-processors/multi-core/multi-threaded applications taking over... back in 2003... and yet... here we are in 2009 and while dual core processors are all the rage, decent multi-threaded applications are still few and far between... we can't even get x64 fully adopted... make no mistake, magnetic spinning discs will be with us for even longer than expected...
and only 1.5 million dollars per GB. jk. But I bet they will be expensive!!!!
So, when can we expect another Toms speed record-breaking array?
"The 3.5-inch LS model offers 300 GB and 1250 GB versions" That is quite a lot of space for a SSD. Gotta love typos.... or is it
The press release says the following:
2. User capacities: LS (3.5-inch) = 300GB and 150GB; LB (2.5-inch) = 150 GB
So ya it is a typo its supposed to be 300GB and 150GB
I can usually spot a Kevin Parrish news blog from title alone.
Only he would turn "crazy" into an adverb in a title.
ib4 "can it play crysis?"
its inb4 not ib4
when will they release the unit?
price?
availability?
Teasing only goes so far
is it based on a new controler? how does it handle 4k random writes?
No its multiple SSDs stacked ontop of each other.
Price: Your first born.
I love the CEO's last name -- does he pronounce it A-Hole-a? Bet he's a jerk of a boss...
seems like someone put 3 flash based boards in a raid config!
Probably with a limitation to read from 2, and write to 1 board at a time.
That'd explain their high speeds.
If this is so, we could see 100GB SSD's for about $200; which is an awesome price!
But their battery life would also be nearly trippled compared to another SSD!
...but is capped at 5TB.
First thought that came to my mind. Reminded me of the crap-tastic fiasco with the ISPs. hehehe
Common let;s just throw out some numbers... I'll start.
$1500 for a 150 GB 3.5
Common let;s just throw out some numbers... I'll start.$1500 for a 150 GB 3.5
Sounds about right...
Price? Like Dr Evil said "One Million Dollars!!!!"
Set a course for the nearest bank(to get the large amount of money needed for the 300GB version)Engage
can someone see what i see...to me it looks like the electrical boards are set up like a raid. interesting, very interesting.
can someone see what i see...to me it looks like the electrical boards are set up like a raid. interesting, very interesting.
The 3 boards are indeed connected to each-other, but that doesn't necessarily mean a RAID setup. That would mean a SSD controller on each board plus one raid controller for all. That would be expensive.
My bet is that they use a new controller which communicates with the NAND chips on several channels, more of these than in an usual SSD.
Of course it sounds like RAID0, but it's not actually RAID.
sounds fishy, i'd for one would like to see a full review with pricing, ford could make a car that lasts 50 years but they'd have to sell it for 2,000,000.00
I want four of these. Please. Now.
Would such drive work in a P6T Deluxe ? The cheetah is unbearably loud in the lian li chassis I'm running it
this isn't really that impressive, the fusionio drive which has been around for 5 years still beats the crap out of this granted it's a PCI-E 8x drive, it's bootable and can be configured in raid set ups.
A single drive which is capable of 670mb/s write 750mb/s read moving 32k files
A raid config capable of doing 1400mb/s write 1500mb/s read moving 32k files
oh and it's also still holds the record for IO per second at over 1,000,000 on a single drive
then add in the fact that the access time for the thing is 50 MICRO seconds compared with the millaseconds that every other hard disk is rated at.
These are "enterprise" SSDs. I'm guessing the 150GB model will be in the $20K to $30K range. They're gunning for STEC's current domination with the big-iron vendors, not trying to compete with Intel and OCZ and Samsung in the "enthusiast" market. They've got the performance numbers to beat STEC, so they just need to set their price just low enough to convince all of the big-iron vendors to switch from STEC to Pliant SSDs.
There's no question that these drives perform well under most server workloads, that's what they've been designed to do, but I would love to see someone actually benchmark one of these drives on a gaming and/or office system just for fun. They're almost certainly not worth the money in anything but a heavily loaded server, but it would be good to know where they would stand.