New SandForce controllers to beef up SSD security & speed

James Delahunty
7 Oct 2010 20:32

SandForce, a pioneer of SSD (Solid State Drive) Processors, has announced a new line of controllers for enterprise-class drives that could dramatically improve performance and data security. It's new SF-2000 family of solid-state drive processors feature a 6 Gigabit-per-second SATA host interface, industry applauded DuraClass Technology, an unprecedented 60,000 sustained random read/write IOPS (Input-output Operations Per Second) and sustained sequential read/write performance of 500 Megabytes per second.
"The market for SSDs is poised to experience rapid growth over the next few years," said Jeff Janukowicz, research manager for solid state drives at IDC. "Solutions, such as the SandForce SF-2000 Family of SSD Processors, that enable increased performance and higher reliability in a flexible design will enable SSD vendors to meet the demands of this fast paced market."
Some features of the SF-2000 SSD Processors include:

• Support for advanced 30nm- and 20nm-class Flash with Asynch/ONFi2/Toggle interfaces with data rates up to 166 Mega Transfers per second
• Enhanced dual-ported SAS bridge support, including non-512-byte sector sizes, e.g., 520, 524, 528, 4K, etc., with Data Integrity Field (DIF) for true Enterprise-class SAS drive behavior and performance
• TCG Enterprise security with selectable multi-banded 256/128-bit AES encryption with line-rate double encryption for data written to the drive
• Advanced ECC engine correcting up to 55 bits per 512-byte sector to assure high data integrity and support for future generations of Flash memory
• Power and performance throttling options to support green computing initiatives
• Industrial temperature support (-40 to +85 degrees Celsius)

"Eighteen months ago, SandForce transformed the data storage industry by being the first company to demonstrate ground-breaking SSD Processor technology that enables MLC flash to be used reliably in enterprise-class SSD applications with world-class performance," said Michael Raam, President and CEO for SandForce.
"We are building on the success of our first generation product now in production with multiple Enterprise OEMs by introducing the SF-2000 family that offers significant feature and performance enhancements for our rapidly expanding customer base of trusted SandForce Driven Enterprise and Industrial SSD manufacturers."