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Lite-ON, a leading producer of enterprise flash storage devices, is announcing its new EP1 series of M.2 PCIe Gen 2×4 enterprise solid-state drives (SSDs). Lite-ON’s EP1 series are designed to solve today’s enterprise storage challenges and address the limitations that hard drive technology imposes on storage infrastructures. Lite-ON’s announcement of the EP1 series is being made at Dell World 2014 in Austin, Texas.
The EP1 series of M.2 SSDs are compact and power-efficient flash storage solutions that plug directly into a server’s PCIe bus, increasing server application performance and delivering fast and reliable access to data while minimizing the load on host CPUs and memory resources. Lite-ON’s new EP1 series of M.2 SSDs are ideal for mixed use environments and application workloads such as financial transactions, online transaction processing (OTP), E-commerce, SQL logging, email servers and more.
According to Darlo Perez, Managing Director at Lite-ON, “We are extremely excited to present our new M.2 PCIe Gen 2×4 solid state drive at Dell World 2014. The new EP1 represents a significant step forward in enterprise storage technology, offering up to 1TB of storage on a compact and highly power efficient M.2 PCIe form factor. Now supporting power loss protection, it offers the perfect balance of performance, enterprise-grade reliability, and cost efficiency.”
Lite-On’s EP1 series will be offered in 480GB and 960GB capacities. The 480GB version is on the M.2 2280 form factor (80mm length), and the 960GB version is on the M.2 22110 form factor (110mm length). Sequential read speeds for both capacities is stated as 1500MB/s. Sequential write speeds are stated as 640MB/s for the 480GB model, and 1200MB/s for the 960GB model. Random 4K read speeds for both versions are stated as 150,000 IOPS, with random 4K write speeds for both of 44,000 IOPS.
Power consumption is stated as being between 1.2 and 1.5 watts at idle. Active power consumption is yet to be determined. The EP1 series have an endurance rating of up to 1 drive write per day (DWPD) for five years, which is one of the highest reliability rankings in the industry. The EP1 series also features power loss protection, multiple data protection layers, and custom firmware. Warranty coverage for the EP1 series has not yet been stated, as well as pricing and availability.
Anyone know if this drive is AHCI or NVMe? Can’t imagine it’s AHCI with those speeds but would still like to confirm.
Perhaps using the Marvell 88SE1093 NVMe controller?
Just off the phone with Lite-On and this SSD is based on the Marvell 88SS9293 PCIe controller. The picture is a marketing picture and the connector on the base of the sample is incorrect. It should be only with a single space…or key.
Am I missing something? The article states PCIe Gen 2 X 4 which falls within these speeds, without the need for NVMe. The hiccup here, however, is the photo of the drive using both B/M keys which would only make it a PCIe X2 SSD as we have seen many times over already. Briefing set up with Lite-On.