Hybrid SSD Drive Promises Fastest Performance Yet
Hybrid SSD Drive Promises Fastest Performance Yet
Posted 05/04/2009 at 8:08am
| by Paul Lilly
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There's fast, and then there's stupid-fast, and a new hybrid SSD drive will fall into the latter category if it can live up to the speed claims being put out by its manufacturer, who says a single DDRDrive X1 can hit a staggering 300,000 IOPS.
The new drive combines 4GB of DDR memory for high-speed operation along with 4GB of NAND flash memory for backup duties. By doing so, the manufacturer claims a full 4GB backup will take no longer than 60 seconds. Equally impressive, the drive scales at a 1:1 ratio with multiple drives, making it theoretcially possible to backup 32GB, 64GB, or even 128GB in 60 seconds with the appropriate configuration.
DDRDrive CTO Christopher George says the hybrid drive was designed with a maximum IOPS performance in mind, and according to the X1's spec sheet, it offers 512B reads and writes up to 300,000+ and 200,000+ IOPS, respectively, and 4KB reads and writes up to 50,000+ and 35,000+ IOPS, respectively. By comparison, Intel's fastest SSDs offering 35,000 IOPS in 4KB read and 3,300 IPOS in 4KB writes.
Less impressive is the DDRDrive X1's read and write transfer rates, which is bound by its PCI-E Gen 1 interface and checks in around 250MB/s (read) and 155MB/s (write).
The 4GB/4GB DDRDrive X1 is available now for $1,495.
Image Credit: DDRDrive
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DDRdriveLLC
May 11, 2009 at 3:23pm
The DDRdrive X1 was singularly designed to target IOPS intensive applications while setting a new standard in performance, power, and price.
In other words, a product exclusively targeted for the enterprise market, i.e. not the consumer market. What's the difference?
Four letters - IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second).
The DDRdrive X1 is the highest performing (300,000+ IOPS), most power efficient (33uW/IOPS) and lowest price (0.005 $/IOPS) internal storage device in existence.
For a significant class of applications (database tables, indices, and transaction logs) that are capacity constrained, we are an extremely potent and unique solution.
The drive for speed,
Christopher George
Founder/CTO
DDRdrive LLC
www.ddrdrive.com
Yusonice
May 04, 2009 at 1:29pm
Why do they not use pcie 16? With graphics card on pcie 16 doesnt really have limits yet...
so maybe they wouldnt want to because of the limit already lies on the SSD they made?
so what if IOPS were better but speeds are almost identical to intel?
AndyYankee17
May 07, 2009 at 8:51am
a x8 will fit in a x16 but a x16 won't fit in a x8, I don't know of any mobo that has x8 so you really wouldn't be harming people by giving extra bandwidth
Keith E. Whisman
May 04, 2009 at 11:05am
I like the article but there are errors and I don't believe these errors are those of Paul. The most blaring to me it the statement "PCI-E Gen 1" I have never heard of PCI-E in any type of Generation terms except for perhaps PCI-E X16 V2. I believe that PCI-E and all it's varients except for V2 were put together as a standard and released at the same time meaning that PCI-E X1 is the same Generation as PCI-E X16.
If I'm wrong please correct me and give evidence to me mistake by providing a URL.
These memory ram drives are nothing new and really will end up costing more than a larger standard SSD and definately more expensive then a very lard standard HDD with perhaps a small performance increase.
I believe that SSD's are part of the future but these ram drives just aren't going to be the SSD of the future. I am convinced that the PCI-E SSD's show that there needs to be a new HDD/SSD device interconnect. Perhaps it could be called SSDSATAXWhisman. Well just an idea. It could be a set of like ten twisted pairs of wires or something.
Toady00
May 04, 2009 at 11:47am
I believe they were refering to the original PCI-e standard. There is now a PCI-e 2.0 standard. Here is the link to the wiki entry
Keith E. Whisman
May 04, 2009 at 12:29pm
PCI-E 2.0 only refers to X16 for graphics. This is a X1 PCI-E card. A X1 will fit in all other PCI-X slots. X4 will fit in all but X1. It goes X1, X4, X8 as in Bi Eight and X16 and X16 V2.0. Except for X16 V2.0 all of the slots are of the same generation and there is only one V2.0 slot, none other. So the statement makes no sense to me.
The heck with this little crap. Get me that Rack Mount back up drive that was posted here a few days back. I want that tiny 5TB doo hicky.
AndyYankee17
May 07, 2009 at 8:50am
don't forget the difference between pci-x and pci-e, a pci-e x1 will not fit in a pci-x slot
almax
May 04, 2009 at 5:45pm
It only refers to the interconnect bandwitdh
http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/pciexpress/specifications/#ecn
"PCI Express Base 2.0 specification doubles the interconnect bit rate from 2.5 GT/s to 5 GT/s"
http://www.pcisig.com/news_room/faqs/pcie2.0_faq/
"For example, a PCI Express 1.1 x8 link (8 lanes) yields a total aggregate bandwidth of 4GBytes/s, which is the same bandwidth obtained from a PCI Express 2.0 x4 link (4 lanes) that adopts the 5GT/s signaling technology. This can result in significant savings in platform implementation cost while achieving the same performance level. Backward compatibility is retained as existing 2.5 GT/S adapters can plug into 5.0 GT/S slots and will run at the slower rate. Conversely, new PCIe 2.0 adapters running at 5.0 GT/S can plug into existing PCIe slots and run at the slower rate of 2.5 GT/S"
you can easily find other devices/slots
if you just google PCIE 2.0 X8 or 4X for example.
jihnn
May 04, 2009 at 9:59am
who besides me remembers when vcr's first came out the machines were hmmmmm thinking 2k but sure they were over 1k and the tapes were $20 plus
i remember thinking that i would never be able to own one lol
last i checked you couldn't pay over $85 for a machine and tapes were about a dollar
i hope this technolegy gets lots of support i want it and i need to be able to afford it
maybe 2 years give or take
Keith E. Whisman
May 04, 2009 at 11:08am
And Remember VCR movies cost between $50 to $200 dollars each? And remember how rental stores would rent out VCR's and the movies because it was simply alot cheaper?
I wish BDR would hurry up and come down in price. It didn't take this long for DVD to drop down in price.
Sonickid101
May 04, 2009 at 8:43am
At $1500 Dollars i'll pass, maybe if they made this affordably on par with other HDD or SSD drives then I would def consider it but sadly that day is not today.
AndyYankee17
May 04, 2009 at 8:42am
that'd better include the ram and even so it's still a bit of a rip off IMO, why not make it x4 or x8 even x16 to get even more speed out of it?
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