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ATP Electronics, well known for their high performance memory products, has released their new Velocity SI Pro industrial grade SSD.
The newly released LSI Sandforce based drives will offer up to 500MB/s read and write speeds, not to mention 60,000 4k random read IOPS.
The SI Pro will utilize SLC flash and has gone through extra validation for things like shock and vibration, which is important considering the drive’s target market.
ATP also cites total bits written of 1,000 TB for the 30GB drive, 2,000TB for the 60GB, 4,000 TB for the 120GB and 8,000 TB for the 240GB variant. This is one of the main advantages of SLC flash, which has several times greater durability than MLC. Another benefit is that SLC can offer significantly faster write performance than its lower cost counterpart.
The new product will be able to operate in a wide range of temperatures ranging from -40°C to +85°C and will incorporate AES 128/256 encryption. In addition, the new drives will offer both ATP SMART Life Monitor and Secure Erase technologies.
SMART Life Monitor apparently uses the drive’s SMART info in order to give users an estimate of the SSD’s remaining useful life, ensuring it can be replaced before the inevitable happens. Secure Erase uses protocols derived from NSA and DOD standards, and according to ATP, guarantees the complete systematic elimination of data from the drive. Finally, ATP mentions PowerProtector, which is no doubt a super-capacitor based backup system that helps make sure any cached data can be written before power is lost.
Certainly, this is quite an interesting product release in its own right, but what’s even more intriguing is that this drive was released at around the same time as IBM’s new SSD400S.B which is also SLC based and aimed at industrial applications.
Do these firms know something we don’t about an upcoming increased demand for super reliable SLC based SSDs? It may all just be a coincidence, but in my view, the timing really is quite uncanny.
I guess we’ll know soon enough if there was some deeper meaning behind this situation, or if it was just happenstance after all. Perhaps this goes beyond industrial and business applications, as I know quite a few consumers who would be very interested in the high performance and reliability of an SLC based enterprise class drive, even with the high price tag.
Indeed, it may be that a new niche market is forming around these ultra high end products and companies are starting to take notice. Of course, I can’t tell you with absolute certainty that I’m correct, but I do know that niche markets have a strong precedent and a history that can’t be denied. Maybe an increased interest in these drives could simply be seen as the latest occurrence of such scenarios. In any case, these SSDs still are very costly, being way out of the price range of the majority of potential buyers. Maybe selling off some of those old Laserdisc players would help with the expense……
See Press Release On Next Page…….
An SLC SSD with 240GB and a worked out sandforce controller would rank EXTREMELY high on the list of things that I’d like for my NP8130. Faster than MLC, more reliable, and even less latency. The cost wouldn’t bother me if I knew the drive had 10x the write resilience. Fewer drives for me to have to purchase down the road.
Actually tested this SSD, it failed with Power cycling testing. Since this application is Remote logging system it’s rubbish to use in field.