Chicago (IL) – Chip manufacturer has demonstrated what is, at least to our knowledge, the fastest solid state disk drive (SSD) demonstrated so far. A demo unit shown in a blurry YouTube video was hitting data transfer rates of 800 MB/s and can expand to apparently about 1 GB/s. The IO performance is about twice of the best performance we have seen to date.

Ok, we have not actually seen the exact numbers, since the YouTube video is too blurry, but if we believe the claims made my Micron staffers, then we might see a dramatic increase in SSD performance in the not too distant future.

Posted on Micron’s new blog, the video showcases a 2-processor, eight-core Intel Xeon PC with two SSDs The difference to your average SSD is that these drives are not connected via a PATA or SATA interface and therefore are not limited to the bandwidth limit of 300 MB/s of SATA II. Instead, the drives have PCIe interfaces and, according to Micron, include flash data management enhancements.

During the short demonstration, Micron’s Joe Jeddeloh claims that the two cards hit a data throughput of about 800 MB/s and about 150,000 to 160,000 random IOPS. He also showed a flash PCIe card that combined the two cards in one device with 16 flash channels. This card will be hitting a bandwidth of 1 GB/s and “at least 200,000 IOPS,” he said. For comparison reasons, the fastest enterprise SSDs available from big manufacturers today hit about 250 MB/s and about 30,000 IOPS.

The fastest hard drive you can buy today, WD’s Velociraptor, clocks in at about 100 MB/s.

The PCIe concept of SSDs has been shown before, most notably by Fusion IO, which hit about 100,000 IOPS about a year ago. The company recently announced a “consumer version” of its PCIe card, which will offer data throughput of 500 – 700 MB/s and about 50,000 IOPS for about $1000.

We have no idea what the Micron drive will cost, but it does not look cheap. Jeddeloh noted that the 1 GB/s drive will be available “soon”.       

really...

Nov 25, 2008 19:08     

the fastest enterprise SSDs available today hit about 250 "GB/s"?? I don't know much about hard drives and SSDs, but I'm gonna guess that is a typo... unless it really is 2500x faster than WD's Velociraptor [You are correct. Thanks for the note. -ed]
rimbuk report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

Enough with the promises~~

Nov 25, 2008 22:25     

Enough with the promises and claims about speed and capacity!!! How about giving some REAL promises on dramatic price drop and kick SSD into mainstream???
whatever report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

In the real world...

Nov 25, 2008 22:33     

Please correct me since I'm confused... But I thought that arguments from SanDisk pointed to the fact that Windows wasn't optimized for SSD drives? Corroborating with that story, the Fusion IO drive (array?) that I saw (video)used a Linux based OS for demonstrations. While I can completely understand the performance benefits, and wallet detraction's of the said drives, I question if those benefits would be realized if they were installed in an XP or Vista based consumer system.

9Nails report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

SATA Sucks

Nov 25, 2008 23:47     

Ok, SATA III better be coming out soon or it's gonna be the bottleneck. Or unless we're gonna resort to using PCIe flash. ???
Geesh report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Fastest hard drive

Nov 26, 2008 00:12     

15,000 RPM hard drives are faster than the Velociraptor, which is "only" 10,000 RPM.
Spycho report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Fastest?

Nov 26, 2008 00:38     

I've read your stories about Fusion's pci express ssd and according to what is on your site the iodrive has performance around 800 MB/s with only one of their ssds. It sounds like Micron is trying to play catch up and if the best they can reveal in this sneak peek is only half of what the Fusion iodrive can do it just seems a bit sad.
Loenhart report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Anderson

Nov 26, 2008 02:19     

its really the next generation of SATA
James report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

so, loading times?

Nov 26, 2008 03:31     

like how fast would it fully load vista ultimate or XP pro? or Windows Server 2003?
JohnnyricoMC report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

@rimbuk

Nov 26, 2008 07:45     

thanks for ruining my dream :P
Q report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Velociraptor is slow

Nov 26, 2008 08:13     

The WD Velociraptor is merely the fastest S-ATA drive, there are much faster drives at 15k RPM with other interfaces (such as Seagate Savvio and Cheetah drives)
Jonas report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

best be SLC - no one ever seems to mention that....

Nov 26, 2008 08:28     

best be SLC - no one ever seems to mention that.
anon report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

The future of the "hard drive"

Nov 26, 2008 08:55     

I figure the PCI-E model is the next gen, until they figure out a way to just make SSD modules to fit in RAM-like slots. I'm also waiting for a system that can use the BIOS to carve RAM into RAM-drives and fool the OS into using them like hard drives. I figure having a separate "hard drive" device is a fading idea.
JJ report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

We have now a speed Problem

Nov 26, 2008 09:02     

If it cannot be a SATA device, we have a lot of compatibility trouble. We can't make RAID 0, and it will interfere with PCI Express video cards. We need urgently a SATA III capable of 5000 Mb/s or much more, and new chipsets.
mm report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

100MB/s?

Nov 26, 2008 15:53     

Having just done a software raid 1 rebuild at 155MB/s on a Seagate 15.5k SAS drive, I'm not sure the Velociraptor qualifies as fastest in the context it was given.
Ryan report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

future please

Nov 26, 2008 16:31     

What a dream... 250 GB/s.. I know.. it was a typo :) but anyways.. I wan't to travel to 2022...
Aurastream report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

i just got a patriot 64gb ssd drive

Nov 26, 2008 20:28     

man it is slow on writes. just to think that you can write your data on something that is alot more reliable than harddrives.
andre report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Fast solid state drives are great, now lets work on the price

Nov 27, 2008 13:15     

I'm glad that faster hard drives will be coming out. I guess the problem at this point in time is that they are 5 times the cost of the disk based drives. thanks from tony at: http://www.ntopics.com http://www.ntopics.com
ntopics report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

the two guys....

Nov 28, 2008 08:49     

are dorks. they remind me of 2 year old opening their Christmas presents. what a lame video!
GWolfman report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Nope! NOT a typo! ...

Dec 02, 2008 09:47     

Nope! NOT a typo!
Labrat report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

hardly superior to Fusion IO

Dec 05, 2008 20:52     

lol, it says that "two" of test gives you a max of 160 000 IOPS, YET "a single" Fusion IO is tested to give 50 000 IOPS. What a scam. Bold useless claims. Go jack yourself, I'm sticking with fusion IO which carry a life expectancy of about 20 years for the average user.
eric report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0