Micron Technology has just announced the new Micron P400m solid state drive (SSD) for data center servers, appliances, and storage platforms that manage the volume and velocity of big data.

The Micron P400m promises the high reliability and high endurance that is critical for high-performance storage tiers, accelerating throughput. The P400m SSD's endurance is the equivalent to writing every picture posted to Facebook daily to the drive for 311 days straight (about 78 billion photos total), Micron said. By comparison, Micron's entry-level SSDs offer one to three full drive writes per day and a midrange SSD offers about five full drive writes.



Flash technology loses performance and endurance and is generally harder to work with as it's scaled down into new designs. Micron claims that the P400m resolves these issues by implementing Micron's Extended Performance and Enhanced Reliability Technology (XPERT), which integrates the storage media and controller through highly-optimized firmware algorithms and hardware enhancements.

All manufacturing, testing, and qualification for the Micron P400m is completed solely at Micron facilities.

Key features of the Micron P400m include include XPERT, which extends the drive's life, making the P400m perfect for write-intensive workloads. It is designed to achieve 10 drive fills per day for five years. The SSD also features onboard power loss protection, high throughput and IOPs, consumes less power than HDDs and requires almost zero cooling.

The P400m comes in 100, 200 and 400 gigabyte (GB) capacities and a standard 2.5-inch 7-millimeter (mm) form factor. The drive is currently in production and is sold direct to OEMs and through Micron's distribution network.

Features, specifications

- Micron 25nm MLC NAND Flash
- RoHS-compliant package
- SATA 6 Gb/s interface

- ATA modes supported
PIO mode 3, 4
Multiword DMA mode 0, 1, 2
Ultra DMA mode 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

- 512-byte sector size support
- Hot-plug capable
- Native command queuing support with 32-command slot support
- ATA-8 ACS2 command set compliant
- ATA security feature command set and password login support
- Secure erase command set: Fast and secure erase
- Self-monitoring, analysis, and reporting technology (SMART) command set

100GB performance (steady state)
- Sequential 64KB read: 350 MB/s
- Sequential 64KB write: 210 MB/s
- Random 4KB read: 50,000 IOPS
- Random 4KB write: 14,000 IOPS
- READ latency: 0.57ms
- WRITE latency: 2ms

200GB performance (steady state)
- Sequential 64KB read: 350 MB/s
- Sequential 64KB write: 300 MB/s - Random 4KB read: 55,000 IOPS
- Random 4KB write: 16,000 IOPS
- READ latency: 0.51ms
- WRITE latency: 2ms

400GB performance (steady state)
- Sequential 64KB read: 350 MB/s
- Sequential 64KB write: 300 MB/s
- Random 4KB read: 55,000 IOPS
- Random 4KB write: 17,000 IOPS
- READ latency: 0.51ms
- WRITE latency: 2ms

Reliability
- Mean time to failure (MTTF): 2 million device hours
- Static and dynamic wear leveling
- Uncorrectable bit error rate (UBER): <1 sector per 1016 bits read

Endurance: Total bytes written (TBW)
- 100GB: 1.75PB; 200GB: 3.50PB; 400GB: 7.00PB

- Capacity (unformatted): 100GB, 200GB, 400GB

Mechanical: 7.0mm height
- SATA connector: 5V ±10%
- 2.5-inch drive: 100.5mm x 69.85mm x 7.0mm

- Field-upgradeable firmware
- Power consumption: <7.5W (TYP)

Operating temperature
- Commercial (0°C to 70°C)