News

posted on 29 August 2008 09:52

IBM has demo'd a flash solid state drive setup more than twice as fast as the quickest SPC-rated RamSan-400 SSD from Texas Memory Systems.

IBM's Project Quicksilver is not an actual SPC run but IBM claims its UK Hursley development lab and US Almaden researchers and engineers have put together a 4TB Fusion-io solid state drive (SSD) behind an IBM SVC (SAN Volume Controller) and produced more than 1 million I/Os per second (IOPS). This is over 250% faster than TMS' RamSan-400 SPC-1 performance which is pleasing to IBM as the RamSAn uses faster DRAM than NAND flash.

Its eight times faster than IBM's own DS8300 Turbo drive array and about five times faster than an HDS USP-V drive array. It also took up 1/5th the floor space and required only 55 percent of the power and cooling of the fastest SPC-1 rated SVC set up. IBM didn't talk money, but at $30/GB, Fusion-io's pricing earlier this year, a 4TB setup would cost $120,000 for the ioDrives. Then you'd have to factor in IBM's own kit costs.

Wham, bang, thank you ma'am - except that it isn't a product. Charlie Andrews, director of product marketing for IBM systems storage, said it could be commercialized in twelve months.

A Fusion-io ioDrive does more than 120,000 random read/write IOPS. It comes in 80, 60 or 320GB capacities and has a PCIe interface, meaning it's a server accelerator by default. We could produce 4TB's worth of these drives with 12 x 320GB ones and one 160GB one. What 'behind' the SVC actually means in terms of connected interfaces is not clear. Iit could mean the SVC's own PCIe bus is extended with the SSDs hooked onto it. It's got to be non-standard otherwise Hursley, where SVC development is done, and Almaden, where far-out research is done, wouldn't both be involved.

Andy Monshaw, IBM's GM for system storage, was quoted in an IBM release, saying: "IBM is integrating this (SSD) technology with systems and applications ...  Quicksilver is a significant step forward in this comprehensive systems strategy. This is not about replacing today's hard disk drive with a new form factor, this is about having a complete, end-to-end systems approach -- and that's not something EMC, HP or Sun can match."

I think HP and Sun would pretty firmly beg to differ, what with HP having a Fusion-io relationship and storage array SSD plans, and Sun modifying its Solaris, ZFS and other system software to use SSDs. EMC would say why wait? SDD-enable your drive arrays now and get a performance boost instantly instead of waiting a year.

Why is IBM press-releasing this no-product-is-available announcement when it hasn't press-released it's XIV-is-available-system  or it's DS5000 products? Odd that. You might think it's just spreading FUD to stop IBM customers buying SSD-enhanced EMC, HP and Sun kit. Me, I couldn't possibly comment.

IBM did say it had shipped SSD storage for certain blade servers since June last year but gave out no details. What a tease.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}