Seagate: Who us... no flash cred? Check out our PCIe card, suckers

Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2013/05/08/seagate_gen3_flash/

Joins flash mob in earnest, pushes out SATA and SAS SSDs too

Posted in Storage, 8th May 2013 06:03 GMT

Seagate has opened up fresh fronts in its assault on the flash market and announced SATA and SAS SSDs as well as a PCIe flash card, signalling for the first time in a product sense just how serious it is about becoming a major league flash product supplier.

There are basically four products: the 600, 600 Pro and 1200 SSDs and X8 Accelerator PCIe card. The two 600s and the 1200 come in ordinary and HE (High Endurance) versions.

The 600 is a client SATA product, aimed at the notebook (and desktop) retrofit market, while the 600 Pro is an enterprise SATA interface product. The 1200, meanwhile, is an enterprise SAS product, while the X8 Accelerator, obviously, is a server-accelerator card.

600 Client SSD

This product has a 6Gbit/s SATA interface and 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities. It's built using 19nm MLC flash from Toshiba and provides:

up to 80,000 random read IOPS,
up to 70,000 random write IOPS,
up to 500MB/sec sequential reads,
up to 400MB/sec sequential writes and
read latency of 70μs and write latency of 80μs.

Seagate 600 client SATA SSD

Theoretically, this product should kick the ass of any notebook or desktop hard drive. Seagate reckons it has an 0.58 per cent annual failure rate and the 480GB can have 72TB written to it over five years. It comes with either a 5mm or 7mm z-height to wide its applicability.

600 Pro Enterprise SATA SSD

This product also has a 6Gbit/s SATA interface and the same 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities and 19nm MLC flash from Toshiba but its performance profile is different:

The stats provided indicate:

up to 85,000 random read IOPS,
much lower 40,000 random write IOPS,
higher 520MB/sec sequential reads,
higher 450MB/sec sequential writes and
average latency of 140μs.

Seagate Enterprise SATA SSD, the 600 Pro

Seagate claims it has the best-in-class IOPS/watt rating and its endurance over a five-year usage-based warranty is two full drive writes a day. Like the 600 it comes with both 5mm and 7mm z-height dimensions.

The HE version sacrifices some capacity for higher endurance. So it comes in 100GB, 200GB and 400GB capacities and the 400GB product can have up to to 1080TB (1PB) of data written to it written over the five-year warranty period.

For a direct comparison here are the individual 600 Pro and 600 Pro HE endurance numbers in terms of total TB written over the drive's lifetime:

600 Pro: 120GB - 24TB, 240GB - 134TB, 480GB - 350TB
600 Pro HE:100GB - 220TB, 200GB - 520TB, 400GB - 1,080TB

Charting it makes the relationships clearer:

High endurance really does mean high endurance.

1200 Enterprise SAS SSD

This is one of Seagate's big flash guns and is built using 21nm Samsung MLC flash and has a 12Gbit/s SAS dual-port interface. The capacity levels are 200GB, 400GB and 800GB. Here's the performance data:

up to 120,000 random read IOPS,
to 40,000 random write IOPS,
to 800MB/sec sequential reads,
to 640MB/sec sequential writes and
average latency of 180μs

The Seagate 1200 SAS SSD

It has a lower average failure rate at 0.44 per cent and the 800GB product can have up to 14.6PB written over its five-year warranty period - 10 full drive writes a day. It comes with encryption and has an instant secure erase feature.

The 1200 High Endurance version once again trades off some capacity for endurance and its capacities are 100GB, 200GB and 400GB - quite a savage drop, but endurance rises to 18PB written for the 400GB version.

X8 Accelerator

The X8 Acelerator product is built with Virident technology and is effectively a tweaked Virident FlashMax II. It uses Micron 25nm NAND, Seagate is using three different foundries for its flash at present, and has a HHHL - half-height, half-length - 8 lane PCIe 2.0 interface. The capacity levels are 550GB, 1.1TB and 2.2TB.

Here is its performance profile:

up to 350,000 random read IOPS,
up to 103,000 random write IOPS,
up to 2.7GB/sec sequential reads,
up to 1.1GB/sec sequential writes and
read latency of 78μs and write latency 19μs
It sure is the top performing dog in Seagate's flash pack.

The endurance is up to 33PB written over the five-year warranty period and the average failure rate is 0.58 per cent. Virident supplies a lot of added value software with its PCIe card products, such as storage memory software.

Seagate says: "The X8 Accelerator will include the base software for the product, which includes all the necessary device drivers and advanced flash management software to reduce latencies. We will be expanding the software portfolio in future releases and announcements."

NAND supply

Seagate has surety of NAND supply through its relationship with Samsung, which obtained a near 10 per cent shareholding in Seagate when it divested its hard disk drive business to Seagate in 2012. The two companies have a relationship sealed with dollars, always the best glue to fix business relationships in place.

Seagate has accomplished a significant broadening of its flash product range with this third generation revamp of its solid state product line. It has a dedicated flash business unit and intends to be a tier one flash product supplier. That'll put more pressure on the other flash SSD and PCIe product suppliers like Fusion-io, Intel, Micron, OCZ, LSI, Plextor, sTEC and many others. Over to you, Western Digital. ®