Backs Up Against The Memory And I/O Walls
November 4, 2019 Michael Feldman
nextplatform.com
excerpt:
The memory and I/O wall are arguably the two most intractable bottlenecks in the modern datacenter. And while those limitations are a source of consternation for cloud and enterprise users alike, for a company like Micron Technology, whose products are focused almost exclusively on these two kinds of devices, those bottlenecks can be seen as market opportunities.
Of late, the company has been particularly focused on expanding its footprint in storage. Just recently, Micron launched its initial 3D XPoint SSD, the X100, which is the first alternative to Intel’s Optane SSD. The X100 boasts 9 GB/sec of I/O, with latencies an order of magnitude better than NAND flash SSDs. Significantly, the X100 uses the NVM-Express interface, which is well on its way to becoming the de facto standard for solid state storage in the datacenter.
In conjunction with the X100 unveiling, the company simultaneously announced the 7300 SSD series, another NVM-Express product, this one aimed squarely at mainstream cloud and enterprise users. In fact, it’s the first mainstream offering in this bracket, filling a gap between Micron’s top-of-the-line 9300 NVM-Express SSD and the just-announced 5300 SATA SSD. By the way, both the 7300 and the 5300 employ Micron’s latest and greatest 96-layer TLC NAND technology. It represents the third generation of the company’s 3D flash memory, following the 32-layer and 64-layer designs.
The 7300 is destined to be the star, though, using its NVM-Express smarts to deliver up to 3 GB/sec of read throughput (with average latency of 90 microseconds) and 1 GB/sec of write throughput (with average latency of 25 microseconds). Capacities range from 960 GB all the way up to 6.4 TB. As a mainstream offering, it covers a lot of application territory, from transaction processing to analytics to machine learning. And as an NVM-Express device, it will find a suitable home in nearly any server of recent vintage.
Micron’s enthusiasm for NVM-Express is completely understandable, given the large following the technology now enjoys in the datacenter. According to semiconductor market research firm Forward Insights, the enterprise SSD market share of NVM-Express devices is expected to hit 60 percent this year, with SAS and SATA SSDs, together, making up the remaining 40 percent. That would reverse the 40/60 split of NVM-Express to non-NVM-Express market share in 2018. Regardless of the exact numbers, we are seeing a pretty amazing adoption curve when you consider that NVM-Express has only been around since 2015.
“Now I personally don’t believe that datacenter will go to all-flash anytime soon,” says Roger Peene, the vice president of marketing for the Storage Business Unit at Micron. “But the penetration and footprint is absolutely growing at an astounding rate, predominantly at the expense of hard drives.”
This growth is particularly apparent in the hyperscale space, where Peene tells us they are seeing almost 100 percent transition from solid state SATA to NVM-Express. That largely has to do with the better SSD performance made possible by the PCIe-based NVM-Express standard. “Putting very expensive flash behind the SATA interface, which limits its throughput, just doesn’t sense,” he explains. “So, on SATA you’re limited to 550 MB/sec. On NVM-Express, you can scale up to 6 GB/sec and beyond.”
continues at nextplatform.com
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