It’s a tough set of criteria to satisfy.
- You want high capacity (8+ TB/massive amounts of data),
- lowest latency,
- but also fastest transfer speeds.
Those are three characteristics which are at odds with each other, and typically form the vertices of an iron triangle.
If such a product exists, I assume you are willing to pay the price? Otherwise, you have extended your iron triangle problem into the third dimension, creating an iron pyramid. ![]()
🤨
And how can this statement get along with this one?
I can help you rule out one or two criteria right away, or at least better qualify some of them:
- The lowest latency SSDs will never have a higher capacity launch (in the foreseeable future). I’m talking about 3D XPoint (a.k.a., Intel Optane), which has latency lower than the lowest of NAND by at least an order magnitude. The best and last series to date—the P5800X—averages less than 6 microseconds. And the highest capacity ever made of it is 3.2 TB—also from that same series.
- If you narrow your universe of options to only NAND, you’ll find that this holds true for NAND also. The lowest latency you can get from NAND (SLC) will also put you below 3.2 TB. You’re going to have to get comfortable knowing that you cannot have the lowest latency while having space for 8 TB+. Or you might want to consider stuffing multiple SSDs into an enclosure and calling that your SSD.
- Sequential speed and latency also are somewhat inversely related. The enterprise SLC NAND SSDs have impressively low latency, but their sequential speeds are not much to write home about, while the consumer SSDs push peak sequential performance but have mediocre latency. *
- The Intel Optane P5800X series is also a counterexample for this; it’s got excellent sequential speeds and low latency.
* Consider consumer SSDs a performance risk if your primary use is storage of data which will not be rewritten often: Ssd data retention