Japanese NAND manufacturer Kioxia has announced the availability of its PM7 SAS SSDs for customer evaluation. Like their predecessors, these high-performance SSDs are aimed at the enterprise and HPC markets most notably neural networks, machine learning, scientific and financial analysis, and other bandwidth-intensive servers. The drives use the 24G SAS (SAS-4) interface with sequential read speeds of up to 4.2GB/s, and 720K random read IOPS, a healthy 20% improvement over the preceding PM6 series.
The PM7 SAS SSDs leverage Kioxia’s BiCS Flash (TLC) 3D NAND memory with a maximum capacity of up to 30.72 TB, making them the industry’s highest capacity and densest SSDs. Special emphasis is being placed on security. The PM7 series SSDs are FIPS 140-2 certified and are currently being tested for FIPS 140-3 certification. The drives also feature Flash Die Failure Protection which allows transparent disabling of a flash chip without affecting the overall reliability.
Some of the key features of the SSD are as follows:
- Dual-port to support redundancy for storage systems that require high reliability.
- Flash Die Failure Protection – a Kioxia feature that allows for transparent disabling of a failing flash chip, while maintaining full reliability at the SSD level.
- Endurances for a wide range of workloads; read-intensive (1DWPD) and mixed-use (3DWPD).
- Security options available; sanitize instant erase (SIE), TCG Enterprise self-encrypting drive (SED) and FIPS 140-2 certification. FIPS 140-3 certification is in process and is expected to be completed in 2022.
