the Fastest Solid State Disks (SSDs) 1.8", 2.5" to 3U

2.5" 128GB PATA / SATA flash SSDs
100MB/sec sustained read/write
from Memoright

Squeak! - the Fastest Solid State Disks (SSDs)

Michelangelo found David inside a rock.
Megabyte was looking for a solid state disk.

SSDs - all
Flash SSDs
RAM SSDs
the SSD Buyers Guide
the Top 10 SSD Companies
RAM SSDs versus Flash SSDs - which is Best?
Predicting a Timeline for Flash SSD Performance
3.5" Terabyte Solid State Disks with GBps Performance

Editor's intro:-

You'll often see news stories that say such and such a manufacturer has launched the "fastest SSD". But how can they all be true?

Sad to relate - but often they are not. Other storage publications - which only have a superficial grasp of this market - publish many claims which are completely wrong because they aren't aware of the hundreds of other SSD products already available in the market.

For example - EMC's Symmetrix DMX-4 (announced in January 2008) will be a respectably fast SSD array when stuffed with STEC's Zeus IOPS flash SSDs. Many oems (including EasyCo and Memoright) have previously written articles about the beneficial speedups obtained in throughput and IOPS when using hard disk form factor flash SSDs in RAID systems. But the new EMC systems will be nowhere near as fast as the rackmount SSDs listed in this article - because they use faster RAM technology. And EMC's box is not the fastest flash SSD rackmount either.

Other times the "fastest SSD" label depends on which form factor you're looking at. A rackmount server SSD isn't much use to you if your application only has space to fit a 2.5" unit.

If SSD speed is your thing - you've come to the right place. We've published SSD listings in our directories for over a decade, and there has been a dedicated online SSD Directory here on STORAGEsearch.com since 1998. And way back in prehistory I was designing systems which worked with neanderthal SSDs nearly 3 decades ago.

Easyco enterprise flash SSD 1U, 2U or 3U silver or black

1U, 2U, 3U enterprise flash SSDs
MFT accelerated appliances
from EasyCo

Speed isn't everything* and it comes at a price. But if you need the speediest SSD then wading through the web sites of over 70 current SSD oems to find a suitable candidate slows you down. And the SSD search problem will get worse. I predict there will be over 100 SSD oems in 2008. I've done the research for you to save you time. And this page is updated daily from storage news and direct inputs from oems.

* Speed isn't everything - but it is important. According to the world's first SSD Buyer Preference Survey - in answer to the question "Why Do People Use Solid State Disks?" - the #1 reason given was - "Application speedup" - cited by 76% SSD buyers.

Violin 1010 - world's densest DRAM array - for HPC and data center server acceleration

world's fastest 2U RAM-SSD
from Violin Memory

the Fastest in-production shipping SSDs - May 15, 2008 - © STORAGEsearch.com
form factor	manufacturer	model	technology	interface	performance metrics and notes
rackmount 3U	Texas Memory Systems	RamSan-400	RAM SSD	Fibre Channel InfiniBand	3,000MB/s random sustained external throughput, 400,000 random IOPS
rackmount 2U	Violin Memory	Violin 1010	RAM SSD	PCIe	1,400MB/s read, 1,00MB/s write with ×4 PCIe, 3 microseconds latency
rackmount 2U	Solid Access Technologies	USSD 200FC	RAM SSD	Fibre Channel SAS SCSI	391MB/s random sustained read or write per port (full duplex is 719MB/s), with 8 x 4Gbps FC ports aggregated throughput is approx 2,000MB/s, 320,000 IOPS
rackmount 1U	Curtis	HyperXCLR R1000	RAM SSD	Fibre Channel	197MB/s sustained R/W transfer rate, 35,000 IOPS
5.25"	Attorn	HyperDrive4	RAM SSD	IDE	125MB/s sustained read / write, 44,000 IOPS
3.5"	Curtis	HyperXCLR	RAM SSD	Fibre Channel	197MB/s sustained read or write, 25,000 IOPS
3.5"	STEC	ZEUSIOPS	Flash SSD	Fibre Channel	200MB/s sustained read, 100MB/s sustained write
2.5"	Memoright	GT Series SATA	Flash SSD	SATA	120MB/s sustained read / write
2.5"	Mtron	PRO 7500 (June 2008)	Flash SSD	SATA	Sustained read 130MB/s, Sustained write 120MB/s
2.5"	Trident Space & Defense	prelim	Flash SSD	SATA	120MB/s sustained read / write
1.8"	Samsung Electronics	sampling	Flash SSD	SATA	upto 100MB/s write, 120MB /s read
1.8"	Mtron	April 2008 production	Flash SSD	SATA	upto 100MB/s write, 120MB /s read
1"	STEC	April 2008 production	Flash SSD	SATA	upto 90MB/s reads and 55MB/s writes
PCIe card	Fusion-io	ioDRIVE	Flash SSD		700MB/s read, 600MB/s write
PCI card	Micro Memory	MM-5435CN	RAM SSD		521MB/s sustained read / write
compactPCI card	Vanguard Rugged Storage	cPCI Flash Drive	Flash SSD		40MB/s sustained read/ write
PMC card	Vanguard Rugged Storage	PMC Flash Drive	Flash SSD		45MB/s sustained read, 40MB/s sustained write
CompactFlash card	STEC	MACH4 CompactFlash	Flash SSD		90MB/s read, 55MB/s write

Footnote:- the Higher Cost of Higher Performance

Although the starting point for SSD performance is that old flash versus RAM debate the performance of the fastest products (like those listed here) is a business as well as a technical decision.

Make the product too expensive and not enough customers will buy it.

The 1U rackmount form factor is a curious example where a few years ago you could actually buy a much faster product than is available today. But I'm guessing the capacity of those older systems didn't best suit enough customers at that performance level and that price - because that product is no longer available. Customers need a feature set (speed, capacity, interface and price) that suits their application. Getting the speed right is just a small part of the mix (although in the context of this article - it's the most important

SATA flash SSDs with 150M bytes / sec burst read and 80M bytes / sec sustained write time from MTRON - sorry photo coming soon

3.5" (128G) & 2.5" (32G) SATA SSDs
90MB/s sustained write
from Mtron

Manufacturers can leverage the intrinsic memory performance in 2 main areas

the degree of parallelization in the memory array and the bandwidth of the internal memory bus.

Although everyone has access to similar RAM or flash chips - how you connect up the internal memory array can make a 10 to 1 performance difference in commercially available SSDs - depending on what the designer had in mind as the main market. That pushes some complexity and constraints back onto the SSD controller and makes it more complex / expensive. The complexity caused by virtualizing the SSD due to internal constraints (such as physical memory block sizes) becomes greater - for flash - above about x10 to x50. It is possible to solve that problem with more complexity in the host interface cache - but then other factors start to impose constraints such as avoiding a high volume of spurious block writes which could impact endurance.

the implementation of the SSD controller and host bus interface.

Just as in RAID controllers you get a wide range of performance in the market depending how oems have chosen to implement critical functions (speed versus power, speed versus cost, programmable architecture versus hard wired etc) you get similar tradeoffs in an SSD product. But unlike a host bus adapter designed for use with slow hard disks the impact of the SSD controller is much more visible as an intrinsic limiter or enabler of key performance attributes.

Behind many of the simple to deploy fast products in the SSD market listed here lie many years of hard effort, product development and customer feedback, market trials and futuristic vision.

The race to market the fastest SSDs is getting more competitive.

More contestants.

Bigger prizes.

Who's going to win?

The market will decide. Stay tuned to the SSD page to see what happens next.

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