SanDisk ULLtraDIMM SSD ultra-low latency storage launched

by Mark Tyson on 22 January 2014, 10:07

Tags: SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK)

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SanDisk has announced the release of what it calls the "industry’s first enterprise-class, ultra-low latency, memory channel storage solution," - the ULLtraDIMM Solid State Drive. The new storage solution is the result of collaboration between SanDisk and Diablo Technologies. The innovative design of the ULLtraDIMM "closes the last performance gap in current storage infrastructures by placing flash as close as possible to the CPU and applications," says SanDisk.

SanDisk is proud to boast that ULLtraDIMM storage outperforms other existing flash storage solutions on the market. As it is connected to the memory bus using the DIMM form factor it can be employed in "any server or blade system found in enterprise today," and is fully interoperable with RDIMMs,we are told.

As well as the headline figure of "an astounding 5 microsecond write latency," SanDisk says that latency remains constant as you add further DIMM storage modules, as illustrated by the graph below.

"The SanDisk ULLtraDIMM SSD was designed to expand the reach of ultra-low latency flash storage throughout the data center and scale to meet the requirements of any enterprise application, no matter how bandwidth or capacity intensive," said John Scaramuzzo, SVP and general manager, Enterprise Storage Solutions at SanDisk. "The ULLtraDIMM SSD’s linear performance scalability and innovative DIMM form factor allow organizations to deploy flash as their application requirements change, without requiring significant infrastructure investment."

Looking at other performance characteristics, a single ULLtraDIMM offers up to 150K IOPS random read and up to 65K IOPS random write. The ULLtraDIMM utilises 19nm MLC flash and SanDisk's Guardian Technology for management. SanDisk is making the new storage form factor modules available in capacities of either 200GB or 400GB.



HEXUS Forums :: 6 Comments

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Minor typo, first word of the article says ‘SanDick’!
The graph's lines are both this new Flash DIMM thing, red is latency, blue is I/Os per second.

How does the system know that the DIMM is a storage device instead of a RAM device? Must be something in the RDIMM specification…
How does it fair with removing RAM sticks and using this for storage/RAM. Wouldn't this be more useful to HTPC's and small form factor systems that don't need fast RAM speeds
Sounds awesome but how expensive will these be? I also expect that when we move to DDR4 the DIMM slot will change slightly like it has for previous changes which would mean an expensive upgrade to get the ULLtraDIMM to work with new machines.

If they are affordable, similarly priced to current SSDs, then I will be interested in one of these for an upgrade to my current SSD. PCI-E solutions are still too expensive for my liking so I suspect these will also be :(
I've got the same question as sykobee, how does the server tell the DIMM slot is full of Flash rather (or in addition to?) RAM? Is it a kludge by using RDIMMs extra cycles?

Presumably the improved IOPS with multiple devices is simply striping?

CES was remarkable with its lack of SATA express compatible devices so perhaps this is the solution a couple of years down the road for consumers, it seems a more forward thinking solution than PCI Express. Intel will, of course, be the largest factor in determining this.