Seagate Introduces 10GB/s PCIe SSD And 60TB SAS SSD
by Billy Tallis on August 9, 2016 8:01 AM EST- Posted in
- SSDs
- Storage
- Seagate
- Flash Memory Summit
Seagate is looking to break records with two enterprise SSDs they're showing off at Flash Memory Summit this week. The first drive is one that's been seen before: the 10GB/s PCIe x16 SSD that Seagate demonstrated in March. It has now been named the Nytro XP7200 and is scheduled for mass production in Q4. Based on four Nytro XM1440 M.2 SSDs under one heatsink on a full height expansion card, the XP7200 is more of a backplane than a drive on its own. Unlike some other multi-controller PCIe SSDs, the XP7200 does not include a PCIe switch chip. This means that the card can only be fully utilized in PCIe x16 slots that support operation as four separate x4 links. Plugging the XP7200 into a PCIe x8 slot would render two of the four M.2 drives inaccessible. And because there are four independent NVMe SSDs on the card, hitting the peak advertised read speed of 10GB/s requires the use of software-based RAID-0 or a similar striping scheme.
Seagate Nytro XP7200 specifications | |||
Capacities | 3.8 TB, 7.7 TB | ||
Interface | PCIe 3 x16 | ||
Sequential read | 10000 MB/s | ||
Sequential write | 3600 MB/s | ||
Random read IOPS | 940K | ||
Random write IOPS | 160K | ||
Power during mixed R/W | 26 W |
The performance specifications of the XP7200 show clearly the impact of using the capacity-optimized XM1440 models rather than the endurance optimized versions. Despite boasting total sequential read speeds of 10GB/s and almost one million IOPS for 4kB random reads, the write performance isn't earth-shattering. The XP7200 will be available in capacities of either 3.8TB or 7.7TB, as a result of populating it with either the 960GB XM1440 or the newer 2TB model.
With the Nytro XP7200 moving toward production, Seagate has brought out another SSD tech demo with eye-catching specifications. The unnamed SAS SSD packs 60TB of 3D TLC into a 3.5" drive. In order to connect over a thousand dies of Micron's 3D TLC NAND to a single SSD controller, Seagate has introduced ONFi bridge chips to multiplex the controller's NAND channels across far more dies than would otherwise be possible. The rest of the specs for the 60TB SSD look fairly mundane and make for a drive that's better suited to read-intensive workloads, but the capacity puts even the latest hard drives to shame.
Seagate 60TB SAS SSD Specifications | |||
Usable capacity | 60 TB | ||
Interface | Dual port 12Gb/s SAS | ||
Sequential read | 1500 MB/s | ||
Sequential write | 1000 MB/s | ||
Random read IOPS | 150K | ||
Random write IOPS | unknown | ||
Peak power | 15 W |
The 60TB SSD is currently just a technology demonstration, and won't be appearing as a product until next year. When it does, it will probably have a very tiny market, but for now it will give Seagate some bragging rights.
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Santoval - Sunday, July 16, 2017 - link
Booting in 1 - 2 seconds is just plain impossible, even with a hypothetical optical computer. Only a computer that never shut down but actually hibernated (rather deeply), could do that. But currently you need a full reboot for various updates, particularly kernel updates in Linux (and many more, if you use Windows). The speeds required for ~1 second reboots would be immense, and the latency ridiculously low. I suppose you could do it if you could fit the BIOS, the bootloader and the entire OS in some kind of non volatile memory that was as fast as L1 cache. Do you really see that happening?tygrus - Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - link
The problem is, there are a lot of waiting for device power-up and wait for response. The classic BIOS was like rollcall at school: you have to wait until everyone is in the room, seated and listening and you call out a name one at a time (you can't call out all names at once nor listen for everyone to respond in parallel).jhh - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
Large vendors want you to buy service contracts on their equipment. What better way to do that than with a 12 month warranty, while getting a 3-5 year warranty from their ODM.Jacxel - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
Fastest internet in my area (claims it) is 330MB/s 2 years ago it was under 200, it's not unreasonable to consider that 500MB/s will become a bottleneck for downloading in the near future. Anyway I want my computer to boot faster than I can blink.TBH the 60 TB is more impressive, who doesn't want a massive home media server they can fit in a shoebox?
ddriver - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
Seems like you are confusing bits for bytes... Those 330 mbits would be 41 mbytes.330 mbytes are doable... only if you are on 5+ gigabit network and have a host which can supply that bandwidth to you. Certainly an achievable peak if you are on a fast fiber optic network and have a neighbor who is also on it and seeds torrents from an SSD drive, but totally unsustainable at a large scale.
rpg1966 - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
I love that we're at a stage where sequential read/write specs of 1GBs+, and "just" 150K read IOPS are now considered "mundane" :-)WackyWRZ - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
In the target sector for these drives (enterprise) - these speeds have been mundane for a while now.rpg1966 - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
Just proves the point even more.blackice85 - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
I noticed that too, I was expecting ~500MBs read/write when I read that part. Even if this isn't the fastest out there, it's well past most SSDs on the market.nagi603 - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
It would be great if SSD prices would fall much closer to that of their mechanical siblings... and if large capacities would be available at sane prices. Still, 60TB even for a tech demonstration, is insane.