Toshiba Europe today sent out a press release announcing its RM5 series 12 G/bit SAS SSDs that, according to the company, can replace SATA SSDs in server applications. Although Toshiba doesn't provide any pricing information, the company claims the drives come at a price “that obsoletes SATA SSDs”.
The RM5 series will become generally available by the third quarter of this year in capacities of 960GB, 1.92TB, 3.84TB and 7.68TB and in the SFF-8639 and 2.5” form factors.
Toshiba lists sequential write and read speeds of up to 650 MB/s and 838 MB/s respectively. Random writes and reads are specified at up to 35,000 IOPS and 150,000 IOPS respectively.
“SATA simply cannot compete with SAS, falling well short in terms of performance, robustness, and encryption options”, according to Toshiba in the press release. Normally SAS drives were less affordable, which is why SATA drives were the usual choice for mass storage. With the RM5 series Toshiba wants to close the cost gap while offering a higher performing product.
The lower price is partly possible because RM5 series features Toshiba's 3D BiCS Flash TLC NAND. Toshiba lists an endurance of 1 DWPD, a MTTF of 2,5 million hours and the company provides a 5-year warranty.
