Pliant Technology Lightning EFD LS/LB Enterprise-Grade SSDs

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The days of the old spinning platter hard drives may soon be numbered. The gap in both price and performance between hard disk drives (HDDs) and the up-and-coming solid-state disk (SSD) technology is getting razor thin and we may soon see a point of parity that could spell the death knell for the old stalwart HDD. This means that your storage will get faster and cheaper as designers and data storage architects work to integrate the devices into the flash memory of the computer’s motherboard. Speaking directly to this market shift, relative newcomers, Pliant Technology, have just announced the release of two new enterprise-grade SSDs that it claims have more than doubled the speeds of its closest competitors.

Pliant Technology’s freshman series of enterprise SSDs, which includes the 3.5-in EFD LS and the 2.5-in EFD LB, is built on a proprietary ASIC design that the company says can manage over two times the input/output operations per second (IOPS) as even the fastest competitive drives. So what are we talking when it comes to IOPS? How about 180,000 IOPS for the EDF LS and 140,000 IOPS for the EFD LB. And when it comes to read/write speeds, there is no doubt that the numbers from Pliant will raise some skeptical eyebrows.

According to Pliant, the 3.5-in EFD LS drive can produce up to 500MB/sec sustained read or 320MB/sec write rates while the 2.5-in EFD LB clocks in at up to 420MB/sec read and 220MB/sec write rates. Pliant also makes the claim that there is no limit to the number of writes that can be performed to the drive and that it will work without slowdown for at least five years. They are hitting right at one of the major concerns of most enterprise users, durability.

As for competitive technology, the majority of enterprise-grade SSD manufacturers use what is called fiber channel connectivity. This is a key differentiator for Pliant. Their new products use serial-attached SCSI (SAS), which has been called the interconnect of the future by those that follow the industry closest. In its current state, SAS supports 6Gb/sec data transfer speeds while its roadmap indicates a target of 12Gb/sec rate by 2012. Fiber channel drives are currently capable of 4Gb/sec data transfer speeds.

Pliant states that the target market for their new set of drives is the OEM segment with major players like HP, EMC, and Hitachi Data Systems being top on the list. I suppose this means that consumers shouldn’t expect to see them at their local Best Buy anytime soon. Pliant refused to release an MSRP for the drives but they have stated that they will fall somewhere between Intel’s 64GB SATA X25-E SSD at $780 and STECs 73GB fiber channel Zeus SSD at $6,000. A price range of $780 to $6,000? Now that’s pretty useful, isn’t it.