Fusion-io just took the wraps off a new, high-performance series of MLC NAND flash-based accelerators that push the limits in terms of speed and capacity. There are two families of products in the new Fusion-io Atomic series of products, the high-end and PX600 series and the not quite as high-end, but still drool-worthy SX300 series. The Fusion-io SX300 Atomic Series products will be offered in capacities of 1.25TB all the way on up to a massive 6.4TB. The 1.25, 1.6, and 3.2TB devices feature low-profile PCBs, while the larger 6.4TB Atomic SX300 has a half-length, but standard full-height PCB. All of the drives have PCIe 2.0 x8 connections.
Former Hewlett-Packard technology chief Shane Robison was hired last year to help reboot operations at Fusion-io, a pioneer in bringing smartphone-style data storage to computer rooms. Now he’s putting a stamp on its product line. The Salt Lake City company is hosting an event in San Francisco Wednesday to announce its next jump in technology, a piece of hardware called Atomic that is aided by a new generation of the widely used chips known as flash memory. Such solid-state data storage lets users fetch data much more quickly than the disk drives that have long been used to store most corporate data, while using much less energy and avoiding the risk of mechanical failures. Those are the reasons flash chips are the norm in smartphones, and are quickly being added to the server systems of big consumer websites and other customers that care about performance. Fusion-io is best known for circuit boards that plug directly into servers, while some other companies sell devices called solid-state drives that look more like disk drives and fit into their sockets.
