Okay, pause. Time out. It's not April 1st or December 28th, and we have access to the official announcement, so the information is solid: Seagate announced an SSD with a capacity of 60 terabytes. The only available image shows a unit with a 3.5-inch form factor and SAS interface, meaning it's clearly aimed at the enterprise market, but we never imagined that the Samsung SSD with 15.36 TB would give up the top step of the podium so soon.
A new storage record
Records exist to be broken, there's no doubt about it. If we move that phrase to the computing world, everything advances so quickly and aggressively that it's very hard to keep a record (of any kind), especially when efforts concentrate on things like expanding memory, increasing the number of transistors on a chip, or increasing storage space. On this last point, hard drives are testing their limits. Western Digital and Seagate offer 10 TB drives, but Seagate CEO James Luczo confirmed that the first helium-filled 12 TB drives will be put to the test during the last quarter of the year. Another piece of news from Seagate is its new 60-terabyte SSD. No, there's no mistake. 60 terabytes.
Announcement and technical details
The announcement and presentation of what seems to be the first prototype took place at the Flash Memory Summit conference, which ends today. Unfortunately, we don't have advanced details like the controller or the type of memory (Seagate confirms that the manufacturer is Micron), but we do know that the SSD adopts the classic 3.5-inch form factor, something many administrators will see as an advantage during installation.
In terms of efficiency, Seagate reports 4 TB per watt, which translates to about 15 watts of total consumption. If we add that a server can incorporate about a petabyte of capacity with 17 of these SSDs, that same petabyte would stay under 260 watts.
Availability and price
The SSD will be available as a "demonstration" for Seagate's main customers, but it's estimated that it won't fully enter the market until 2017. Naturally, the price is a mystery, though if Samsung asks an average of $10,000 for its 15.36 TB, we imagine a number between $40,000 and $45,000.
