Whereas attending Computex in Taiwan this previous June, The SSD Overview had the chance to satisfy with Exascend CEO and Founder Frank Chen, who supplied invaluable perception into the corporate’s background and philosophy. Exascend is a NAND flash storage specialty producer with a product portfolio that spans reminiscence playing cards, DRAM, embedded storage options, and enterprise-class SSDs. From the very starting, nonetheless, it was clear that Exascend is something however a typical storage producer.
Our introduction in Taiwan rapidly led to a go to with Exascend’s engineering crew in Shanghai, China, the place we gained a a lot deeper appreciation for the corporate’s capabilities. Exascend may finest be described as a boutique storage producer. Fairly than merely assembling off-the-shelf parts, the corporate develops its options from the wafer stage upward, combining in-house {hardware}, firmware, and software program experience to create extremely personalized merchandise.
This vertically built-in method permits Exascend to ship an exceptionally customer-focused expertise. As an alternative of manufacturing one-size-fits-all merchandise in excessive quantity, the corporate works intently with prospects to tailor storage options to precise necessities, providing a stage of flexibility and customization that many bigger producers merely can not match.
No sooner had we returned from China than the Exascend PD5 Gen5 7.68TB Enterprise SSD arrived on our doorstep. Constructed on a PCIe 5.0 x4 (four-lane) interface, the PD5 is designed for demanding enterprise workloads, together with high-performance computing (HPC), synthetic intelligence and machine studying (AI/ML), and data-intensive media manufacturing.
The PD5 is available in a U2 form-factor and could be described as a having a ribbed black aluminum two-piece exterior casing. It took no time in any respect earlier than this SSD was up and operating in our enterprise take a look at bench.
The Exascend PD5 is obtainable in capacities starting from 7.68TB to 30.72TB and is rated for sequential switch speeds of as much as 14.1GB/s learn and 9.35GB/s write, whereas delivering as much as 3.12 million IOPS. Designed for broad enterprise deployment, it helps a variety of working techniques, together with Home windows 10/11, Home windows Server, CentOS, Fedora, FreeBSD, openSUSE, Pink Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, VMware ESXi, Citrix, and KVM. Enterprise-class options embody superior LDPC error correction, Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) help, and built-in {hardware} power-loss safety.
On the coronary heart of the PD5 is the Silicon Movement SM8366 PCIe 5.0 x4, 16-channel NVMe SSD controller, paired with 232-layer 3D TLC NAND flash reminiscence. One of many drive’s standout applied sciences is Exascend’s Twin Energy Loss Safety, which mixes customized firmware with onboard tantalum capacitors to safeguard knowledge integrity. Within the occasion of an sudden energy failure, the capacitors present adequate reserve energy for the drive to flush any knowledge remaining within the DRAM cache to NAND flash. As soon as energy is restored, Exascend’s proprietary firmware quickly reconstructs the Flash Translation Layer (FTL) mapping desk, guaranteeing a quick, correct, and dependable return to operation.
An entire checklist of the Exascend PD5’s options and specs could be discovered right here:
The Exascend PD5 is obtainable in each normal and Professional Editions which affords completely different endurance issues and this SSD comes with a 5-year restricted guarantee. Energy effectivity is listed at as much as 25w energetic and 5.4w idle. The Exascend web site could be discovered right here.
