FMS: Lite-On Storage Previewed EDSFF 1U SSD With CNEX Labs Technology

At the Flash Memory Summit 2018, Lite-On Storage previewed the first EDSFF 1U SSD to emerge from its work with CNEX Labs.

In collaboration with such partners, the company delivers a storage solution for scalable computing that aligns to Open Compute Project (OCP) specifications. The resulting EDSFF (Enterprise and Datacenter SSD Form Factor) SSD will provide a cost-effective solution for enterprise and hyperscale cloud environments.

“Standard SSD solutions are great at handling many typical business workloads, but the complexity of storing information in both cloud and data center infrastructure requires SSD firmware to be flexible and adaptable,” said Charlie Tseng, CEO, Lite-On Storage. “Lite-On’s expertise in SSD firmware is perfect for the varying needs of customers.”

This SSD EDSFF solution delivers storage density, system design flexibility, thermal efficiency, scalable performance and maintenance with front-load hot swap capabilities. The hardware design also supports low-latency, 3D TLC and QLC NAND flash based depending on end-users’ specific cloud applications.

Leveraging the CNEX controller’s flexible dual-mode interface support, this SSD EDSFF protocol is configurable between traditional NVMe logical block addressing and the upcoming Denali software-defined interface (formerly Open-Channel SSD).

“CNEX is thrilled to be working with Lite-On on next-generation SSDs for cloud infrastructure,” said Dr. Alan Armstrong, CEO and co-founder, CNEX Labs. “SSDs are experiencing explosive growth due to their inherent performance advantages, but the industry must move beyond legacy designs to provide more advanced, flexible, cost-effective solutions for non-heterogenous environments. In concert with Lite-On, we bring this to reality through CNEX’s hardware design expertise and proprietary low-latency SSD controllers, which feature best-in-class performance, QoS, low power consumption, and flexible support for media technologies and vendors.“

This SSD EDSSF is designed for flexibility for non-heterogenous and rapidly evolving cloud workloads – from high IO/s density artificial intelligence (AI) and compute-intensive applications to high capacity density near-line storage use cases. The initial design supports the EDSFF 1U Long form factor and 16TB of Toshiba Memory Corporation BiCS3 3D TLC NAND. However, capacity can go up to as high as 80TB with QLC technology.

No timetable for this SSD’s release was announced.