Micron RealSSD P300: Enterprise SLC Solid-State Drive

Micron Technology, Inc. introduced the RealSSD P300 solid-state drive (SSD), bringing system performance and improved data integrity to enterprise environments.

The RealSSD P300 drive features the SATA 6-gigabits per second (Gbps) interface. The new P300 SSD delivers steady-state input/output operations per second (IOPS), up to 44,000 reads and 16,000 writes – more than 15 times the write performance of competing SATA-based SSDs.

"The RealSSD P300 SSD is the fastest SATA-based drive on the market," (According to Calypso Systems, Inc. benchmarks) said Dean Klein, Micron vice president of Memory System Development. "The RealSSD P300 is able to do the work of multiple hard drives – outperforming a RAID of 12 hard drives in some cases."  (Micron internal testing shows that the P300 sustained random write IOPs of 16,000 exceeds the sustained random write IOPs of a RAID of twelve 15K 2.5" enterprise SAS drives, which achieved 5,300 IOPs. Testing was performed comparing a single 100GB P300 drive against 12 SAS drives in a standard 12-bay Intel server storage appliance.

The ever-expanding workload of today’s enterprise environments requires the technology within to be able to withstand the rigors of data being constantly accessed, transferred and stored. The RealSSD P300 drive was designed specifically to address these requirements by using Micron’s high-performance and high-endurance ONFI 2.1 34-nanometer (nm) single-level cell (SLC) NAND technology, ensuring product longevity and added reliability in today’s demanding enterprise environments. Combining Micron’s high-quality NAND and proprietary firmware design enables the P300 SSD to deliver the highest SATA drive endurance capability in the industry – 3.5 petabytes total bytes written for the 200GB drive which is equal to writing approximately 1.9 terabytes per day, every day for five years. (Represents P300 200 GB SSD theoretical endurance capability only. Micron does not warrant that the P300 200GB SSD will write such amount of data over any period of time. Micron’s products, including its P300 SSDs, are warranted to meet Micron’s product data sheet specifications only.)

"Aside from its raw performance, the RealSSD P300 product was also designed to reach industry leading steady-state capabilities, even with the write cache disabled. With the P300, users no longer have to choose between IOPs or throughput and maximum data resiliency – they can have both in the same drive," added Klein.

Micron worked with Calypso Systems, Inc., an industry benchmarking firm to test the P300 SSD. "The RealSSD P300 SSD once again shows Micron seizing an industry leading position, delivering tremendous performance gains relative to the competition," said Eden Kim, chief executive officer of Calypso Systems. "By taking advantage of the SATA 6Gb/s, the P300 showed impressive small block 4K Random Write IOPs that were as much as 2.5 to 16 times faster than competing drives it was tested against."

Available in 50, 100 and 200-gigabyte (GB) capacities, the RealSSD P300 drive is targeted primarily at enterprise applications including blade and conventional servers, storage arrays and high-end workstations. Designed to fit the standard 2.5-inch form factor, the P300 SSD achieves a read throughput speed of up to 360MB/s and a write throughput speed of up to 275MB/s. .

Availability
Micron is sampling the RealSSD P300 SSD with customers now and plans to enter mass production in October.