| finding out
more about SandForce SSD processors |
Editor:- more than 30 SSD
manufacturers and systems vendors worldwide (now including
Intel and
EMC) rely on
LSI's SandForce SSD
processors to supply - what is in effect - a new industry standard for high
performance and reliability in a small form factor - enabled by the company's
DuraClass
and other related technologies.
SandForce (acquired
by LSI in January 2012) changed the way that the SSD market viewed the IP
inside the SSD - from being an arcane subject - of interest to only a small
select group of designers and marketers - to becoming almost a cult fascination
for those users who wanted to know what the future would bring.
The
SandForce product marketers leveraged that acclaim in its
SandForce
Driven branding programs - designed to help it and its partners sell more
SSDs.
From my conversations with the company's management what shines
through is that they started from knowing the silicon and worked backwards from
that to create an SSD architecture which rigorously manages all the key aspects
of unreliable raw flash (including MLC) and crafts from that raw material new
solid state storage drives which provide industry leading IOPS and performance
- with the data integrity and reliability needed for the new SSD accelerated
server age. All this - without using external RAM caches too. The thinking
behind this is impressive.
LSI says that its multi-generation roadmaps
are a key reason that oems like its way of doing things. The 1st generation
SandForce controller supported 4 flash generations from 5Xnm down to 2Xnm and
its current generation started at 3Xnm geometries and already supports 3
generations of flash down to 20nm.
If you want to find out more about
the SSD processors the links here - on the right - provide an overview of
publicly available documents about these key SSD processor product families. To
learn more take a look at the
SandForce
flash storage processors overview page. | |
| overview of SandForce SSD
processors
|
- SF-2400
SSD Processors - aimed at cloud computing - and launched in December 2011 -
this range enables the highest performance levels with 2xnm/2ynm MLC flash and
adds new tools for health management and over provisioning
- SF-2200
& SF-2100 - 2nd generation client flash storage processors for
applications where power consumption, boot time, application performance,
responsiveness, and small form factor are important. (up to 500 MB/s, 20 K IOPS)
- SF-1500
Enterprise SSD Processors - this is the product line which established the
reputation of SandForce - for high performance (30k IOPS) in 3Gb/s SATA 2
environments.
- SF-1200
Client SSD Processors - 1st generation product line supports up to 10k
sustained write IOPS in SATA 2 environments. Some oems have used multiple 1st
generation controllers from this family in RAID like arrays - to make
affordable fast SSD modules connected via PCIe.
- SF-2300
Industrial SSD Processors - supports 19nm, 20nm-class, and 30 nm-class SLC
and MLC flash memory - in industrial temperature operation - upto 512GB in a 1.8"
drive - up to 500 MB/s, 20 K IOPS - secure erase and encryption
- Beyond
HDD Form Factors - shows examples of SSDs - designed by SandForce Driven
partners - with form factors outside the range of conventional hard drives
to meet the needs of new SSD markets..
- LSI
SandForce® Reference Design and Evaluation SSDs - these 2.5"
reference designs which have been tested with a wide range of standard memories
- enable oems to quickly customize SSD solutions and minimize time to market
and production costs with a board-level product solution.
| |
