SanDisk unveils PCIe accelerator for servers

Flash memory storage maker SanDisk, known historically for its little blue storage cards in cameras and cellphones, continues to scale out into the business-to-business space, eWeek reports.

On 4 June, the company introduced a new PCIe (peripheral component interconnect express) accelerator card designed to boost the performance of workstations and servers running high-transaction applications in data centres, server farms and cloud computing environments.

According to market research firm Forward Insights, the PCIe flash card market will top $1.2 billion in overall revenue this year, PC Advisor writes.

That compares with SAS solid state drives (SSDs), which will hit $433 million this year and SATA SSDs, which will also garner $1.2 billion this year.

The new Lightening PCIe cards are based on technology SanDisk acquired with its buyout of Pliant Technology last year. The product is based on 24-nanometer single-level cell (SLC) flash memory.

According to The SSD Review, the Lightning PCIe is available in capacities of 200GB and 400GB and up to five cards may be installed in a single system for up to 2TB of storage capacity.

Prices are set at $1 350 for the 200GB and $2 350 for the 400GB capacity.