Competition in the enterprise-class solid-state disk (SSD) drive market is heating up with new players and products. For example, Toshiba’s Storage Device Division recently entered the enterprise SSD market with the introduction of the MKx001GRZB series of SSDs, which come in a 2.5-inch form factor and capacities of 100GB, 200GB and 400GB.

The MKx001GRZB SSDs are based on Toshiba’s 32-nanometer, single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash technology, which Toshiba refers to as “enterprise grade SLC,” or eSLC. The SSD drives come with a 6Gbps SAS interface.

Toshiba claims performance of 90,000 I/Os per second (IOPS) on random sustained reads and 17,000 IOPS on writes (with 4KB blocks), and a sequential sustained read throughput of 510MBps and 230MBps write throughput. The drives require 6.5 watts in operational mode, for a power efficiency rating of up to 13,800 IOPS/watt.

Other features of Toshiba’s MKx001GRZB SSDs include sector sizes of 512, 520 or 528 bytes, and a five- year product life.

(Toshiba also recently introduced traditional – rotating – hard drives that come in a 3.5-inch form factor with up to 2TB of capacity. The MKx001TRKB and MKx002TSKB are available with 6Gbps SAS and 3Gbps SATA interfaces.)

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas today, OCZ Technology showcased a number of client-class and enterprise-class SSDs with a variety of interface options, including 6Gbps SAS and SATA, Fibre Channel, and PCIe. For example, the Vertex 3 Pro SSD uses multi-level cell (MLC) NAND technology and a 6Gbps SATA interface. OCZ claims performance of up to 80,000 IOPS (with 4KB file sizes) and throughput of up to 550MBps. The Vertex 3 Pro is based on controller technology from SandForce.

OCZ also showed the Z-Drive R3 SSD, which has a PCIe interface and is also based on controller technology from SandForce. The company claims throughput performance of more than 1GBps and 135,000 IOPS on the Z-Drive R3.

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