Micron Technology Inc. announced its next-generation solid state drive (SSD) for data center servers, appliances, and storage platforms that manage the volume and velocity of big data. The new Micron P400m SSD is a high-endurance SATA caching and storage solution that was designed to handle the amassing petabytes of structured and unstructured digital information that is created, stored and accessed every day in data centers. Data reliability and system uptime have always been primary concerns for data center managers, but the accelerating influx of data and massive demand spikes add new pressures that require different, more responsive storage systems. The Micron P400m was designed precisely for this environment.

It offers the high reliability and high endurance that is critical for high-performance storage tiers, accelerating throughput, and responding to the peak demand periods that these new applications create. The growing demand for high-performance, cost-effective enterprise storage requires the latest NAND flash technology. Paradoxically, flash technology also loses performance and endurance and is generally harder to work with as it's scaled down into these new designs.

The P400m resolves this conflict by implementing Micron's Extended Performance and Enhanced Reliability Technology (XPERT), which closely integrates the storage media and controller through highly-optimized firmware algorithms and hardware enhancements. The end result is a set of market-focused enterprise features that deliver increased data performance and reliability. With XPERT at its core, key features of the Micron P400m include: High Endurance -- XPERT extends drive life, making the P400m perfect for write-intensive workloads.

It is designed to achieve 10 drive fills per day for five years, which (for the 400GB drive) is the equivalent of writing every picture posted to Facebook daily for 311 days straight (about 78 billion photos total1). Superior Data Protection -- The Micron P400m was designed with multiple features for data protection--including onboard power loss protection--providing peace of mind that data is always right where it should be. Consistent High Performance --Consistent delivery of high throughput and IOPs are critical to providing the performance required in all-flash and tiered storage arrays (tiered storage groups place fast storage in front of slower, high-volume storage to create a versatile system that has both high performance and high capacity).

Low Power -- The Micron P400m consumes significantly less power than HDDs (dramatically less when measured in Watts per work achieved) and requires almost zero cooling. Low Latency -- The P400m delivers reliably low latency times, which are critical to creating a storage system that can consistently respond to unpredictable demand spikes.