Skyera intros 44TB flash array priced at $3/GB

SAN JOSE, USA: Skyera Inc., founded by an executive and engineering team with backgrounds in the solid-state, storage and networking arenas, unveiled the company's Skyhawk series of enterprise solid-state storage systems based entirely on 19/20 nanometer Multi Level Cell (MLC) NAND flash.

The compact half-depth 1u form factor sports 44 terabytes of capacity and comes at a system price of under $3 per gigabyte — before compression and deduplication.

"The 'norms' of solid-state storage have seen much change and improvement over the last few years," said Mark Peters, Senior Analyst at ESG, "But Skyera's flagship product introduction challenges even the best of those new 'norms' and looks set to be a true game changer. Its compact, high capacity form, together with impressive longevity and — most notably and unapologetically — a dramatically-attractive price, promise to change the storage landscape; users who thought they could not afford solid-state are simply going to have to revise their thinking."

Skyera's Flash controller leverages proprietary algorithms to dynamically tune the partitions during the lifetime of the flash, allowing the controller to adapt to different flash behavior as the media ages, says a release.

The Skyera controller reduces damage that the flash oxide layer typically experiences on writes. With lower write amplification, adaptive ECC, and tight integration with Skyera's RAID technology, the life of consumer-grade MLC is extended to five years of enterprise usage. 

Moreover, the flexibility of the Skyera architecture enables the controller and ECC to adapt to future generations of higher-capacity Flash memory that will require different write parameters and more powerful error correction, the release adds.