LSI Launches $11,500 SSD, Crushes Other SSDs

Tuesday LSI Corp announced the WarpDrive SLP-300 PCIe-based acceleration card, offering 300 GB of SLC solid state storage and performance up to 240,000 sustained IOPS. It also delivers I/O performance equal to hundreds of mechanical hard drives while consuming less than 25W of power--all for a meaty $11,500 USD.

"A WarpDrive card can sustain up to 1,400 MB/s of throughput, with reliable and consistent performance across both sequential and random reads and writes," the company said. "It delivers up to 240,000 4K read IOPS and up to 200,000 4K write IOPS, with access latency of less than 50 microseconds. To achieve equal performance on a write IOPS basis utilizing hard disk drives would require over 400 drives, 36U of rack space and consume more than 300 times the power."

The WarpDrive card features a low-profile, half-length form factor that plugs into a standard 8 lane PCIe Gen 2.0 server slot. It's also based on the "enterprise-proven" LSI Fusion-MPT architecture and uses the LSISAS2008 6 Gb/s SAS I/O controller. The card is bootable, doesn't require an external power source, and installs as a single drive with no user configuration required.

"The LSI WarpDrive card sets a new standard for data center efficiency by providing IT administrators with previously unattainable levels of performance while helping to reduce operational and capital expenditures," said Brent Blanchard, director of worldwide channel sales and marketing, LSI.

The LSI WarpDrive card will be available beginning November 29 through the LSI worldwide network of distributors, system integrators, system builders and VARs.

Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.