DiskIOPs December 14th, 2009
PERFORMANCE LEAP FOR ENTERPRISE DISK DRIVES
A new name in the industry, Disk-IOPS Inc. enables an unprecedented leap in performance by using multiple actuators to reduce latency and seek times.
Multiple actuator technology provides more than 6X the I/O performance of the fastest currently available hard disk drives, while reutilizing the industry’s accumulated knowledge and investments in heads, disks, read channels, silicon and firmware. It can also deliver unmatched sequential data rates beyond 800 MB/s, and significant system-level power savings. This new class of disk drives will enable designers to accelerate their system performance without the high cost of SSD’s.
Today’s fastest Enterprise disk drives can deliver sequential data at speeds approaching 200 megabytes per second. Yet sequential data rate is not the only performance metric, especially where multiple-user applications generate workloads which are mostly random-access. The classic disk drive architecture where only one head is active at a given time is now a serious limitation in many Enterprise systems. Rotational and head seek delays cannot practically be reduced much further with this 50-year old configuration.
Disk-IOPs technology can economically bridge the performance gap between SSD’s and today’s HDD’s. Particularly in the direct-attached storage market (HDD’s in or closely connected to servers), Enterprise-grade SSD’s will be unaffordable in many systems. In 2008 the server storage market was over $25B*, with over $10B* in direct-attach storage. The Enterprise Disk Drive market was around 25M* units, worth nearly $4B*.
Disk-IOPs is a startup focusing on ways to improve the performance of Hard Disk Drives. The CEO is David James, formerly VP of Advanced Products for Fujitsu’s disk drive division. By licensing technology from Disk-IOPS, the HDD industry will be able to extend Magnetic Recording technology still further, increasing revenue at attractive margins.
* Estimates from multiple sources.