With these Flash memory doped hard drives, the manufacturer promises more efficient, more reliable and higher capacity hard drives.
On the occasion of its HDD Reimagine event, the storage specialist Western Digital has just presented its latest range of hard drives, based on a new technology called OptiNAND. This is a new kind of hard drive architecture, doped with flash memory.
An association reminiscent of hybrid hard drives, but WD however reject this name for OptiNAND; here the flash memory is “Vertically integrated”Participate in optimized data management. For this, the manufacturer has also reworked its firmware and its SoC in order to make the most of this new material.
A new way to organize storage
In practice, this technology should bring significant benefits in terms of “capacity and performance “”. In fact, this technology makes it possible to achieve very interesting surface densities, rising to 2.2 TB per tray; With nine of them, the first OptiNAND products can already reach 20TB, and this capacity should reach 50TB in the coming years according to the manufacturer. Therefore, it is intended more for professionals who work just in time with large amounts of data; Western Digital cites, for example, cloud operators, NAS providers or even video surveillance specialists.
The latency It should also be significantly reduced by optimizing the number of cache clean cycles. This approach also has advantages in terms of reliability. If the current jumps during a writing process, thanks to the presence of Flash memory, an OptiNAND HDD could save “50 times more data”Than older hard drives, which then dump their content in DRAM.
Starting today, this architecture will serve as the foundation for future Western Digital products; the company has already announced that it is planning “specific dedicated product announcements for different markets” by the end of the year.
Introvert. Beer guru. Communicator. Travel fanatic. Web advocate. Certified alcohol geek. Tv buff. Subtly charming internet aficionado.
