640GB flash card blows hard drives away
Posted by Jason on
October 4, 2007
Utah-based start-up company Fusion-io has unveiled a blisteringly fast, 640GB flash-based PCIe storage card it says can out perform hard drives by a factor of one thousand.
The initial model is designed to slot into a data centre chassis, but it could also be used inside a workstation or suitable PC.
Called the ioDrive, the card can read data at 800 megabytes per second and write at 600 megabytes a second. Initially it will be available in 80, 320 and 640GB versions, however the company has plans to ship a 1.2 terabyte version a little further down the track.
The card’s impressive performance, currently sitting at 100,000 IOPS (input / output per second) comes from a proprietary technology called ioMemory.
According to the company’s documentation, ioMemory is a new-generation architecture that “combines today’s higher density NAND with high speed switching and network protocols to effectively eliminate the performance gap between memory and storage”.
Hard drive makers love pointing out the fact that flash memory has a finite life, wearing out after a certain number of read/write cycles.
However Fusion-io says it has incorporated complex error correction techniques to “minimise fatigue and extend the service life of the NAND components within the ioDrive”. It says the result is a service life of eight years compared with the typical five-year service life of mechanical hard drives.
When the drive does start to feel its age, users will notice a gradual reduction in available storage space, rather than a sudden failure. This way, no data is lost.
The cards will be available in the US from December this year, however there is no date yet for Australian release. Linux drivers will be available at launch with Windows Vista, XP and Server drivers following shortly after.
Pricing is yet to be confirmed, however the company says it is aiming to ship them for less than $US30 per gigabyte. Sounds cheap? 640GB multiplies out to be $19200. Ouch… sounds like the humble hard drive will be around for a long time yet.
9 Responses to “640GB flash card blows hard drives away”
Yeah, ive already got 97 1.2 terabyte cards, there pretty fastish
By Jed on Nov 23, 2007
Yea right. No other tech site on the WEB has any mention of this? Sounds fishy to me. Fusion-IO?? never heard of them. I think I’ll start a web site that says I have a HDD replacement that is 1TB and one million times as fast as conventional HDDs. About as credible as this article.
By Dave on Nov 24, 2007
For non believers who post bullshit responses without at least googling the companies website, this is real. Dont listen to retard Dave or bullshitter Jed. google fusion io and find out yourself before making yourself look like a total asslick!
By 3l1t3 on Nov 26, 2007
Jed and Dave are retarded.
It looks cool and all, but at $30 per gigabyte you can count me out. So I assume it will be affordable for home users in about 5 years.
Here is a link to the webpage: http://www.fusionio.com/
The author of this post should have included a link to it as to avoid the likes of Jed and Dave.
By Clifford on Nov 29, 2007