SanDisk Announces Flash-Based ULLtraDIMM SSD

SanDisk announced a new flash storage solution aimed primarily at enterprises that puts storage in a DIMM slot and promises claims industry’s first “enterprise-class, ultra-low latency, memory channel storage solution”. The idea is that this storage solution is located much closer to the CPU than traditional ones.

ULLtraDIMM SSDs are designed to accelerate enterprise applications that rely on low latency access to storage, such as High-Frequency Trading, VDI transaction processing, virtualization, and cloud computing. SanDisk also says that you can slot additional ULLtraDIMM SSDs into remaining DIMM slots for additional capacity without affecting latency.

SanDisk ULLtraDIMM SSD

The 19nm MLC ULLtraDIMMs promise up to 150K/65K IOPS random read/write performance, and they come in capacities of 200GB or 400GB.

At least one customer is already lined up. IBM will be offering SanDisk’s technology under the “eXflash DIMM” brand for its System x3850 and x3950 X6 servers for a capacity of up to 12.8TB. IBM’s tests reportedly show a write latency of 5-10 microseconds.