SMART Storage Samples Out Optimus Ultra+ SAS MLC SSD Capable of SLC Endurance

Writing fifty times a solid state drives capacity in one day is a lot. Multiply that by five years, and you have a staggering amount of data written to a drive, somewhere near 91,250x the capacity of said drive. That would be in excess of 17 Petabytes for a 200GB drive.

The ability for any SSD to achieve this is a testament to the design and engineering of today’s flash storage. The ability of SMART Storage to do this with only consumer grade MLC flash is nearly miraculous.

SMART Storage believes theyve got the right mix of technologies to outfit the enterprise with MLC solutions in place of more expensive SLC drives. Getting SLC performance at a more palatable MLC price point has been SMARTs focus for several years now, but the new addition to their Optimus line is taking it one step further. The Optimus Ultra+ SAS SSD is SMARTs latest iteration of the Optimus line, this time guaranteed to write 50x the drives capacity per day for five years.

The Ultra+ is the highest endurance MLC solution from SMART, capping the standard Optimus (good for 10 drive writes per day) and Ultra (25 drive writes per day) products. Each is based on a similar configuration, but optimized for various daily write loads and price. With a variety of capacity and endurance options available at competitive price points, SMART believes that their super-endurance MLC drives can handle enterprise-class write loads, mitigating the need for expensive single-level cell products.

Single Level Cell NAND flash is usually rated at 100,000 program/erase cycles, 33x more than most 2xnm consumer/commercial grade flash is rated for.  SLC also has lower bit error rates and lower latency, two highly desirable attributes. Those benefits come with an exceedingly high price tag though, usually starting at $10 per GB and quickly rising from there. With consumer/client SSDs dropping well under $1 per GB, clever firms have been looking to get the best of both worlds.

Guardian Technology is SMART Storages suite of proprietary tech responsible for enhancing endurance, longevity, performance, and data integrity. The increased endurance is primarily credited to advanced signal processing and superior flash management. At the same time, technology to recover from NAND failure is present as well. Finally, power loss protection is made possible by a series of tantalum capacitors, reducing the threat from unexpected power interruption.

The Optimus Ultra+ is available in capacities ranging from 200GB to 800GB. SMART pegs sustained read/write performance at 500MB/s dual port (1,000MB/s in wide port SAS). The Ultra+ is said to be good for 100,000 random read IOPS and 60,000 random write IOPS. Each Optimus is guaranteed for 5 years.

The Ultra+ is currently sampling with general availability expected later this year.

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