Pliant Technology unveils fastest enterprise SSDs in the world

Start-up Pliant Technology Inc. has announced a new class of high-performance and high-reliability flash storage devices. Designed specifically for data centers and high-performance computing platforms, the new drives--called Enterprise Flash Drives (EFDs)--contain advanced software architecture and customized ASIC controllers for speed. They also have a cache-less design to eliminate data loss on power interruptions.

The new "Lightning" family of EFDs uses SLC NAND flash memory, and is available in the Lighting LB and Lightning LS models, which comes in 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch form factor respectively. Both models uses full duplex, and fully independent dual-port Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface for a blistering 160,000 (LS) and 120,000 (LB) IOPs throughput.

In terms of data throughput, its read/write specifications are >525/340 MB/sec (LS) and >420/220 MB/sec (LB), which pegs the read speed of the slower LB drive at almost twice as fast as Intel's own enterprise SSD.

No pricing information has been released, though it will not be cheap. The Lightning LS will be available in 300GB and 150GB while the Lightning LB will be available in 150GB. The company says they will be available via authorized channel partners later this month.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld

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