INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Western Digital has unveiled a new product, the Ultrastar ME200, which is being presented as a Memory Extension drive
a repackaged Ultrastar SN200 that uses 15nm MLC NAND with an endurance of 17 drive writes per day (DWPD)
Available in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities, it comes as a plug-in card or a 2.5-inch form factor like a traditional SSD.At its core is a
software stack that implements a memory management unit (MMU) which maps the drive into the server memory pool including more than 20
performance by swapping a server with 768GB RAM for one with 96GB RAM and an Ultrastar storage solution; an 8:1 memory to ME drive ratio is
recommended although application architects may prefer to experiment first.The Ultrastar Memory Drive will be recognised as system memory at
system BIOS and OS levels and will be transparently available on demand
or hot pluggable functionality.It will be interesting to see whether others (Seagate notably) jump on the software+hardware bandwagon
instead of adopting cutting edge technology like Intel Xpoint to close the gap between traditional storage tiers.
