Toshiba Corp.’s semiconductor & storage products company launched Tuesday its HK4R Series and HK4E Series of enterprise SSDs integrating NAND chips fabricated with 15nm MLC process technology. Sample shipments have already begun.
The SSDs are equipped with Toshiba’s proprietary QSBC (Quadruple Swing-By Code) error correction technology, a highly efficient error correction code (ECC). Along with the power loss protection and data protection features, it helps strengthen the protection of customer data and enhances reliability.
The ECC that are used for NAND flash memory include among others Hamming Code, Reed-Solomon Code, BCH (Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem) Code and LDPC (Low Density Parity Check). Hamming Code was often used at the early generation of NAND flash memory. Calculation of Hamming code is simple and often implemented by software; Reed-Solomon Code handles multiple bits as one symbol and error correction is performed in units of symbols; while Error correction performed in units of symbols is suitable for burst bit error correcting. The BCH Code has flexibility for block length and error correcting capability and power consumption is small with respect to the error correction capability.
Designed for read-intensive workloads, the enterprise HK4R SATA SSD series offers enhanced performance, high reliability and low power consumption with high quality of service, especially for enterprise and file server use. The HK4R family supports 6.0 Gbit/s interface and is available in large capacities up to 1.92TB. All 7.0mm height models are equipped with enterprise-grade features such as Power Loss Protection.
This line can be used for applications such as web servers, file server, media streaming, VOD, and search engine.
Specifically engineered for value-endurance workloads, the HK4E eSSD delivers high reliability, high performance and low power usage. Data center and enterprise applications benefit from high quality of service, provided by the series. The 7.0mm height drive is available in high capacities up to 1.6TB and supports 6.0 Gbit/s SATA interface. Each model is provided with enterprise-class features such as Power Loss Protection. The applications that this line can host include OLTP, VDI, data center, database, eCommerce, and email/messaging server.
These products are Toshiba’s initial enterprise SSDs integrating 15nm MLC NAND flash memory. The line-up including products with double the capacity of conventional Toshiba products were developed utilizing the technology. These SSDs expand Toshiba’s enterprise storage solutions and flexibly meet various diversified requirements of the growing enterprise market.
SSDS that include PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) interface are used for high performance application such as server-side cache or accelerator PCIe interface speed is 1GB/s per 1lane in Gen3. The performance can be increased with multi lane. PCIe SSD also has better latency characteristics by direct connection to system bus.
Current popular protocol of PCIe SSD is proprietary for enterprise segment and AHCI (Advance Host Controller Interface) is mainly used for client application NVMe (NVM Express) and SCSI over PCI / PCIe Queuing Interface (SOP-PQI) are being developed as standard protocol for PCIe SSD. NVMe is optimized protocol for SSD and SOP-PQI can utilize SCSI commands over PCIe Bus, with NVMe and SOP-PQI likely to become popular standard protocol for enterprise application in future.
