Last month Samsung revealed its latest record-breaking large capacity solid state drive, cramming 30 TB into a 2.5-inch drive format unit. Now Nimbus Data has quickly smashed Samsung's benchmark launching the ExaDrive DC100 – a 3.5 inch SSD drive unit with a massive 100 TB capacity.
Unlike Samsung's earlier effort, which offered impressive capacity alongside ultra-fast read and write speeds, the DC100 is engineered to prioritize capacity over everything else. The device only reaches 100,000 IOps (read or write) and up to 500 MBps throughput. These are relatively modest stats, but the drive is marketed at enterprise customers including giant data centers looking to reduce rack space and power costs.
The ExaDrive DC series will be available later this year in both 50TB and 100TB models. Nimbus Data is currently only sampling the product with select strategic customers and no price has been revealed. It's suggested the cost will be similar to current enterprise SSDs on a per terabyte basis, which is code for "it will be extraordinarily expensive," at least initially.
Thomas Isakovich, CEO and founder of Nimbus Data, says that the power efficiency of the drive means it will draw 85 percent less power per terabyte. For a company dealing in big data, this should make the ExaDrive relatively competitive despite the initial cost.
"As flash memory prices decline, capacity, energy efficiency, and density will become the critical drivers of cost reduction and competitive advantage," says Isakovich. "The ExaDrive DC100 meets these challenges for both data center and edge applications, offering unmatched capacity in an ultra-low power design."
While this SSD is only really of interest to big cloud services or giant corporations managing data centers, it is undoubtedly a new benchmark for the future of storage with elements of the technology sure to be incorporated into general consumer-orientated outcomes very soon.
Source: Nimbus Data