Enterprise-class SSDs with 64-layer 3D flash memory

With all-new, advanced features, the innovative PM5 and CM5 series raise the bar in performance capabilities and create new opportunities for businesses to leverage the power of flash storage.

Offering up to 30.72TB in a 2.5" form factor, the TMC PM5 series introduces a full range of endurance and capacity SAS SSDs enabling data centres to effectively address big data demands while streamlining storage deployments. With what it claims to be the industry’s first MultiLink SAS architecture, the PM5 series is able to deliver the fastest performance the market has seen from a SAS-based SSD with up to 3,350MB/s of sequential read and 2,720MB/s of sequential write in MultiLink mode and up to 400,000 random read IOPS in narrow or MultiLink mode.

The PM5 series’ 4-port MultiLink design is an additional technology to achieve high performance, close to PCI EXPRESS (PCIe) SSDs, enabling legacy infrastructures to increase productivity without having to be re-architected from the ground up. Furthermore, PM5 SSDs support multi-stream write technology, a feature that intelligently manages and groups data types to minimise write amplification and minimise garbage collection, translating into reduced latency, improved endurance, increased performance and Quality of Service (QoS).

As TMC’s next-gen NVMe SSD, the dual-port PCIe Gen3 x4 CM5 is a full-featured enterprise SSD. Like the PM5, it also supports multi-stream write technology. It is NVMe over Fabric-ready with scatter-gather list (SGL) and controller memory buffer (CMB) features. The CMB feature uses a part of DRAM on the SSD as host-system memory, reducing DRAM used load of host-side and it enables high speed as a system. Utilising TMC’s BiCS FLASH 64-layer technology, the CM5 series offers up to 800,000 random read and 240,000 random write IOPS for the 5 DWPD (drive writes per day) model and up to 220,000 random write IOPS for the 3 DWPD model, both with a maximum power draw of 18W.

Additionally, the CM5 is being used as a platform to demonstrate and to enable the ecosystem around the Persistent Memory Region (PMR) capability. PMR enables customers to augment system memory with DRAM on the SSD without the use of expensive non-volatile DIMMs (NV-DIMMs). This feature makes it possible for a single SSD solution to provide both high performance storage and persistent memory to meet system performance requirements, while significantly reducing costs by moving metadata operations, such as logging, journaling and application staging to the SSD.

"Toshiba is proud to present its new enterprise flash innovation along with the expansion of our enterprise SSD portfolio with the CM5 and PM5 series using 3D TLC FLASH. The new devices meet customer demands for greater storage capacities and application needs while leveraging the power of the latest flash memory technology," said Paul Rowan, General Manager at Toshiba Electronics Europe, SSD Business Unit.

PM5 12Gbit/s SAS SSDs will be available in capacities ranging from 400GB to 30.72TB with sanitise instant erase (SIE) and Trusted Computing Group (TCG). CM5 NVMe SSDs will offer capacities ranging from 800GB to 15.36TB with SIE and TCG. Both TLC-based product lines offer industry standard endurance ratings with 1, 3 and 5 DWPD options, and the PM5 has a 10 DWPD option available.