Micron's P320h Enterprise-class SSD Runs Circles Around the Competition
Micron's P320h Enterprise-class SSD Runs Circles Around the Competition
Posted 06/02/2011 at 6:55am
| by Paul Lilly
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Micron is making the claim that its new RealSSD P320h solid state drive series is the world's fastest enterprise SSD line built to take advantage of the PCI Express bus. These new drives come in 350GB and 700GB capacities, use 34nm single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory chips, and offer up to 3GB/s of sustained data throughput, more than double that of the nearest competitor, Micron says.
"Micron is defining a whole new category of enterprise-class storage with our P320h PCI-E solid-state storage systems," said Gary Gentry, general manager, enterprise division, Micron's NAND solutions group. "The P320h provides customers with the most compelling performance solution in the industry."
In terms of input/output operations per second (IOPS), Micron rates its P320h line at up to 750,000 IOPS read and 341,000 IOPS write. The random read IOPS, according to Micron, is equivalent to what an Exchange server would need to support more than 1.5 million Outlook users. Furthermore, Micron says its P320h drives can achieve the same throughput as nearly 5,000 hard drives. But are they the fastest?
That appears to be the case. Based on rated specs, the P320h line serves up much higher numbers than OCZ's record-setting Z-Drive R4, which is rated at up to 200,000 IOPS 4K random write and 350,000 IOPS 4K random write speeds.
Image Credit: Micron
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Burner27
June 02, 2011 at 8:40am
One thing for sure is it will not be cheap. Out of reach for most of us.
tony2tonez
June 02, 2011 at 7:27am
So these are SSD drives that are suppose to connect VIA PCI Express slot vs connecting directly to the MB? I dont get it. Are these PCI-E SSD able to run your OS off of? Or are they just for storage? Can you add multiple PCI-E SSD like you would Hardrives?
Number Six
June 02, 2011 at 12:46pm
It's all about bandwidth. The 8x PCI-e v2 slot is capable of 4GB/s throughput in each direction (8GB/s total combined bandwidth).
Now, it's important to note that the PCI-e v2 8x slot's 4GB/s means Gigabyte per second. The best SATA3 controllers allow for close to the theoretical maximum of 6Gb/s, meaning Gigabit per second. 1 Gigabyte = 8 Gigabits. Thus, a 4GB/s transfer rate is actually 5.33 times faster than 6Gb/s -- and that's just in one direction. The total 8GB/s max. bandwidth of the 8x PCI-e slot is more than 10x the amount of a 6Gb/s SATA3 port.
With this in mind, it's easy to see how the PCI-e SSD cards, which RAID 0 multiple SSD drives, can blow away your typical RAID 0 SSD SATA3 array.
Number Six
June 03, 2011 at 2:55pm
Normally, yes. But OCZ solved the issue with their new PCI-e SSDs. According to Anandtech.com, this is done "by hiding the multiple controllers from the operating system and passing on / delegating the TRIM commands as needed."
I suspect that even onboard SATA RAID controllers will eventually follow a similar path to passing TRIM commands.
themohawkadmin
June 02, 2011 at 9:12am
Yes, they connect directly into a PCI-E slot so as to bypass the sata controller. They appear to your computer to be just a regular Hard drive, so you can install your OS or do whatever you want with them. And you can add as many of them as you have free PCI-e slots. :)
tony2tonez
June 02, 2011 at 11:24am
is this the next wave of faster SSD as they are promoting it? Is this something that people will be switching to in a few years as price come down?
kiaghi7
June 02, 2011 at 3:02pm
it's not so much "the next wave" as it is "the crest of this wave"... Think of it like, you have a typical engine in your car, but someone else spends thousands more to get a super highly tuned engine in his car, outwardly the two use the same technology and principles, but his simply uses today's technology to more and greater effect, but there is a great cost to it. The PCI-e SSD cards are for two possible markets, business who have the potential write off of a business expense and considerably larger budgets than most individuals. And of course super-enthusiasts, who can simply throw money at their interests until they get the best. For the average person however, it's a VERY promising note for what will be common place in say 5 years when such technologies will be considered common-place and almost passe. A 3 Terabyte PCI-e SSD card will one day be like a 3TB hard disk is now, a common storage device, and perhaps one day further still it may even be an integrated component, and a paltry three terabytes will be considered small for a cell phone...
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