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Toshiba’s business storage unit debuted three families of Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) solid-state drive (SSD) products using the Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) protocol, targeted for applications including high-performance thin and convertible notebooks, all-in-one PCs and tablets, and server and storage applications.
All three SSD product lines are optimized for high performance and low latency, and use the PCIe interface, which provides point-to-point links with the processor—reducing system bottlenecks.
PCIe enables faster and closer connectivity to the CPU and does not require protocol translation, as is needed running serial-attached SCSI (SAS) or serial ATA (SATA) through an HBA/RAID controller.
PCIe also has lower latency and faster throughput capability, both of which are faster than SAS or SATA.
The nature of PCIe allows for greater customization of SSD solutions through various combinations of power, form factors and performance.
These combinations are called swim lanes. For PCIe, Toshiba has identified at least 12 swim lanes for use in the enterprise/data center, use cases ranging from boot drives to data storage to caching.
The company has development efforts covering all of the PCIe swim lanes for all enterprise and client applications.
The XG3 SSD family is equipped with Toshiba’s Quadruple Swing-By Code (QSBC) error-correction technology, an error-correction code (ECC), while the company claims the BG1 SSD family is the world’s smallest NVMe SSD, available in a single 16mm x 20mm package (M.2 Type 1620) or a removable M.2 Type 2230 module with up to 256GB in capacity.
Finally, the PX04P series of enterprise SSDs are designed for servers and storage appliances needing scalable power and performance settings.
The PX04P series 2.5-inch NVMe SSD boasts low power consumption, with only 18 watts active power driving maximum performance.
The series also supports up to four lanes of PCIe 3.0, and is available in either a half-height, half-length (HHHL) add-in card or a 2.5-inch form factor with SFF-8639 connector.
The PX04P series eSDDs are also equipped with the company’s QSBC error-correction technology.
“Solid-state drive technology for SAS and PCIe is evolving at a rapid pace. Big steps in SSD technology include NAND evolution—A19 nanometers to 15 nanometers to 3D-controllers enabling faster performance with lower latency, software capabilities so the host system can control SSD tasks to ensure consistent performance and latency, and super-high-capacity SSDs, from 16TB to 64TB,” Cameron Brett, director of SSD product marketing at Toshiba’s storage products business unit, said. “These are all coming to market in the next couple of years.”