Viking Modular Solutions Delivers SSDs in DDR3 DIMMs Form Factor

Viking Modular Solutions, provider and manufacturer of DRAM technology and SSD solutions, announced its next generation SATADIMM.

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Viking Modular’s SATADIMM provides high capacity, high-performance SSD in a small form factor. Leveraging the form factor of DDR3 DIMMs and the non-volatile capabilities of SSDs, SATADIMM enables enterprise servers to take advantage of its small footprint to drive significantly increased performance per server or ‘per U’. Viking Modular will demonstrated the product’s capabilities at Storage Networking World in Santa Clara, California, April 4-7, 2011.

Available in both 25mm and 18.75mm (VLP) heights in the industry standard 240-PIN DDR3 form factor, Viking Modular’s SATADIMM has the same Bill of Materials (BOM) as a 2.5 inch SSD but with 75% less footprint, enhancing the quantity of SSDs that can be supported within a 1U server. Utilizing the enterprise-class SATADIMM, 1U servers can produce 1.4M Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) and up to 3x the capacity and overall performance levels compared to current industry standard servers deployed with traditional SSDs.

“At Viking Modular we seek to address the real world challenges of system designers and IT departments who need increasing levels of flexibility, power and performance in their server or storage infrastructure,” said Adrian Proctor, Vice President of Marketing for Viking Modular Solutions. “Our SATADIMM products were designed with this in mind, allowing increased performance and capacity within the existing footprint. SATADIMM has the potential to change the way enterprise OEMs design their servers and will greatly influence the overall server market.”

Viking Modular’s SATADIMM products derive power from any available DDR3 socket, providing a high-performance SSD boost even when hard drive bays are full. SATADIMM delivers sustained performance up to 60,000 IOPS Random Reads and Writes with a transfer speed of 520MB/s, and it supports both 6Gb SATA and SAS interfaces. The SATADIMM family of products is for enterprise markets that utilize systems such as blade servers, smaller 1U rackmount servers, storage bridge bays (SBB) and AdvancedTCA blades (ATCA).

Comments

That's a new idea to use industry-standard 240-pin DDR3 form factor (or
JEDEC MO-269F) to connect SSDs to servers to get impressive performances
in a low volume (25mm and 18.75mm height, 133.35mm length and maximum
7.75mm width) by adding SATA to an existing DDR3 DRAM DIMM socket. First
step in this field was announced by Viking Modular Solutions in August
2010.

SATADIMM includes a patented error detection/correction and power fail data protection with super capacitor.

SLC from 25GB to 400GB and MLC/eMLC from 50GBto 480GB depending on the
models (SATADIMM with 3Gb or 6Gb SATA) are supported as well as advanced
SSD-specific SMART commands with built-in AES-128 encryption. Endurance
is announced at fiive years by the company.

The new device eliminated the need for a power cable by inserting
SATADIMM into an available DIMM socket and connecting a SATA data cable
to begin to use it.

Next step could be flash chips directly on the motherboard? If one firm
could do it, it's Intel manufacturing both motherboards and flash disks.

In the Viking's team presided by Hamid Shokrgozar, VP engineering is
Paul Sweere, former director engineering at Dell. Executive VP is Ralph
Kaplan, previously president of High Connection Density and VP/GM of
SMART Modular Technology's Memory Products Division.

Founded in 1989 and headquartered in Foothill Ranch, CA, Viking Modular
Solutions is a technology division of EMS provider Sanmina-SCI
Corporation and mainly focused on OEMs. It entered into the SSD market
in January 2010 and released two months later SATA Cube3, a small
form-factor and rugged embedded SATA SSD. It also announced last year
the incorporation of SandForce SF-2000 processor family into its
standard 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch SSD portfolio.

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