A few months back, we randomly heard three words during a passing conversation; Intel, Taylorsville, and latency. That was it; no context, no explanation and no hints. Given that we happened to be at the Flash Memory Summit, it was a safe bet that something solid state was afoot, but at the time these were just random words to file …

Kingston, like other memory manufacturers, wanted to get into the solid state storage game a few years back. At the time they chose to partner with Intel, offering their own label on the chipmaker’s first gen SSDs like enterprise-oriented X25-E. Eventually, they branched out with new controllers from Toshiba and JMicron, resulting in a bewildering array of options. More recently, Kingston switched to …

Ultrabooks haven’t been the smashing commercial success that Intel and it’s partners might have hoped for, but they’re still popular, and represent a big chunk of growth in the PC industry. We stopped by Kent Smith’s (of LSI SandForce fame) session on Ultrabooks and flash technology here at AIS to see about the future of those portables from a storage …

We spent some time with Kingston today at AIS discussing an interesting product demo. The massive memory product purveyor showed what they could do with just a few off-the-rack parts in a demonstration which managed a heady 1.8 million IOPS. Using three LSI MegaRAID cards, 24 eMLC-based E100 SSDs, and an Intel based server, the test system was shown looping 4K random read and …

In a nondescript ballroom here in San Jose, we almost tripped over LSI’s upcoming 12GB/s MegaRAID products. Though PCIe Gen 3 6gbps offerings are just now becoming mainstream, 12GB/s products are on the horizon — and we got the chance to see one in it’s natural habitat. This is LSI’s 9271-8i MegaRAID product. Though still some ways from release, we did …

At AIS 2012, LSI announced a new high-availability platform dubbed Syncro. Along with the MegaRAID family and the recently-released application acceleration platform called Nytro, Syncro is all about high availability. While Syncro is a both a concept and a platform, there are actual units being demonstrated. The first two products, Syncro MX and Syncro CS do have different niches to …

It has been a few years in the making Intel is finally putting their name on a SATA III solid state drive controller this morning. After ditching their own silicon for third party Marvell and LSI SandForce flash controllers in mainstream client products, Intel’s new DC S3700 SSD is rocking a brand-spankin’ new custom Intel ASIC at it’s heart. The …

Many organizations implement a “rip and replace” model using cheaper consumer-grade SSDs, and when they inevitably meet their demise under intensive workloads, they’re simply removed and replaced with new drives, increasing the cost of storage. Instead of moving up to much pricier solid state storage options, simply burning though cheaper drives makes more financial sense. SMART Storage Systems’s new CloudSpeed …

The Micron P320h HHHL (Half-Height Half-Length) is a Gen 2.1 PCIe SSD capable of churning out 785K 4K random read IOPS and a little over 200K 4K random write IOPS at steady state. With Microns stash of SLC NAND flash memory, their custom controller, and some great command line and GUI tools, This PCIe SSD is ready to compete. Having …

The race to get the performance and longevity of expensive SLC flash at MLC prices has been going on for some time now. SMART Storage Systems believe that their unique blend of technologies has the potential to replace SLC-based drives in many applications, helping to tip the scales of price vs. performance in favor of high-endurance MLC products. SMART’s Optimus SAS …