Hitachi GST launches Intel-powered SSDs

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) launched its new Ultrastar solid state drive (SSD) family.

The Ultrastar SSD400S family comes in 100GB, 200GB and 400GB capacities, featuring both 2.5-inch 6Gb/s serial attached SCSI (SAS) and 3.5-inch 4Gb/s fibre channel (FC) interfaces.

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The Ultrastar SSD400S family is based on Hitachi’s enterprise hard disk drive (HDD) expertise collaborated with Intel’s 34-nanometer (nm), single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory and SSD technology.

“Hitachi’s strategic investment and commitment in the enterprise market is evident with the new Ultrastar SSD family. We have a strong track record of working with global enterprise customers and are proud to report favorable responses to the Ultrastar SSD400S family. With qualifications now underway, we anticipate volume shipments to commence in the first half of 2011,” said Mike Cordano, executive vice president of Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Hitachi GST.

The 400GB SSD can endure up to 35 petabytes (PB) of random writes over the life of the drive, which is the equivalent of writing 19.2TB/day for five years, ensuring greater utilization and reliability in the most demanding enterprise environments.

The company claims that the new Ultrastar SSD400S family is capable of 535MB/s read and 500MB/s write throughput with 6Gb/s SAS, and 390MB/s read and 340MB/s write throughput with 4Gb/s FC.

Hitachi GST also claims that the new drive can also deliver up to 46,000 read and 13,000 sustained write IOPS, reaching speeds 100 times faster than traditional hard drives.

Hitachi GST has already shipped and is currently qualifying its Ultrastar SSD400S drives with select OEMs.

Broader qualification samples are now available with product ramp scheduled in 2011. The Ultrastar SSD400S family is backed by a five-year limited warranty, or the maximum petabytes written (based on capacity).