1.6-Terabyte Smart Optimus SSD Reads A Gig Per Second

Enterprise hardware company Smart Modular Technologies has announced a line of SSDs that appear to wipe the floor with pretty much everything out there. It comes in capacities from 200GB all the way to a current record capacity of 1.6TB. And not only is it the biggest single SSD available, it also is the fastest, using a Serial Attached SCSI interface to achieve (they claim) 1000MB/s read speeds and 500MB/s writes.

The interface is actually specced at 6Gb/s (~750MB/s, theoretically), so there might be a small amount of shenanigans going on here, but those are still monster speeds. Even the best consumer-grade SSDs only do about half that right now. And it fits in a 2.5″ form factor, too.

Smart is also touting their “Guardian Technology,” some on-drive tech that helps extend the life of the drive and, presumably, keep the data in order so it can be read off at those incredible speeds.

No pricing was given for the Optimus line, though it is described as being “cost-effective.” I’m guessing it’s going to be expensive as hell, but we may see some trickle down of this speed over the next year or so.

Update: There are larger-capacity SSD-based PCI cards, but strictly speaking they aren’t drives the way this one is a drive – i.e. with a serial interface and 2.5″ or 3.5″ enclosure. Could be splitting hairs, but worth mentioning.

[via Geek.com]