Following last week’s enterprise solid-state drive (SSD) announcement, Seagate is beefing up its line of Nytro PCIe flash accelerators with the new write-latency sensitive model, the XP6500.
Shipping now, the Nytro XP6500 “augments the product line” the company acquired from LSI, Kent Smith, senior director of product marketing for Seagate, told InfoStor. Seagate snapped up LSI’s flash storage unit in May 2014 for $450 million. Today, that tech is being adapted to provide low-latency storage operations for demanding enterprise workloads, including transactional databases.
In terms of providing a responsive experience with mission-critical applications, “it’s all about latency,” said Smith. In that regard, the PCIe 3.0-compliant XP6500 features a write latency of 14 microseconds, according to the company’s testing. “Thirty to 50 microseconds is typical” in the product category, he reminded.
The XP6500, which is available in capacities of 1.5 terabytes (TB) and 4 TB, can sustain read speeds of up to 4 gigabytes (4000 megabytes) per second and write speeds of up to 2.2 gigabytes (GB) per second. Random read and write input/output operations per second (IOPS) are rated at up to 300,000 IOPS and 100,000 IOPS, respectively.
Amid the buzz at this week’s Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, Calif., the company also announced new NVMe-based SSDs, the XF1440 and XM1440. NVMe, short for Non-Volatile Memory Express, is flash storage specification for connecting SSDs to the PCIe bus.
When it ships in late October, the 2.5-inch XF1400 will be available in an endurance-optimized versions for mixed workloads along with capacity-optimized models for read-intensive workloads. Packed with enterprise MLC (eMLC) flash chips, drives will top out at 1.6 TB and 1.8 TB, respectively.
XM1440 SSDs, which the company envisions will serve as speedy direct-attached storage and caching for 1U servers, is expected to arrive in early 2016. Sporting a compact M.2 form factor, the drives are powered by MLC+ flash chips and will be available in sizes of 400 GB and 800 GB for the high-endurance models, along with 480 GB and 960 GB for the read-friendly variation.
While better known for its hard disk drive business, Seagate is betting big on SSDs. “These new flash products greatly expand the range of our total product portfolio and demonstrate how Seagate’s acquisition of the LSI flash technologies is paying off,” said Brett Pemble, vice president of flash products at Seagate, in an Aug. 11 statement.
“Nytro XF1440/XM1440 SSDs deliver the highest performance in the smallest power envelope,” continued Pemble. “The XP6500 flash accelerator card provides ultra-low latency capability for applications that require fast logging and produce significantly higher transactions per second,–something today’s applications demand.”
