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As a follow up to our initial Computex release detailing SanDisk’s new enterprise PCIe Solid State Accelerator, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have a sit down with C.T. Chu, SanDisk Sr. Product Marketing Manager, for a more in depth look at SanDisk Lightning.
Imagine our surprise when C.T. pulled out the Lightning for a closer look and discussion as to how Sandisk might like to see the Lightning’s entry into the marketplace. Let’s kick things off with a much deserved closer look.
The SanDisk Lightning PCIe Solid State Accelerator is available in 200 and 400GB capacities and up to five cards can be installed on a single system to provide up to 2TB of total space. It utilizes SanDisks own NAND flash memory as well as the SanDisk/Pliant PTHEMI2-1VO controller.
Under the heatsink lies a LSI RAID controller and the Lightning SSA sports five Micron D9LHR DRAM cache memory chips which, in total, are not indicative of the cards total available cache size as stated by C.T.
For an enterprise device, pricing of $1350 and $2350 MSRP is very attractive and C.T. highlighted such things as the cards ‘plug and play’ characteristics which we are familiar as being indicative of the LSI RAID controller and it’s software. The Lightning SSA also has a five year warranty, is bootable, and boasts of 245 microsecond response times, 50 microsecond sustained read and write latency as well as well as low power requirements of only 15 watts.
All in all, with the SanDisk Lightning’s attractive price point, compact size, workhorse characteristics, five year warranty as well as the SanDisk name and long standing reputation for quality, this device will be a very welcome addition for many.
Stay tuned as we hope to get the SanDisk Lightning SSA on the bench for some true enterprise testing soon enough!