Western Digital's HGST To Demo 12-Gbps SAS SSDs

The new high-performance SSD is slated to be demonstrated May 9 at the SCSI Trade Association Technology Showcase in Santa Clara, Calif., using 12-Gbps SAS host bus adaptors (HBAs) and expanders from LSI and PMC-Sierra.

HGST, formerly known as Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, was acquired in March by Western Digital in a deal worth $3.9 billion in cash and $900 million in Western Digital shares.

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Serial-attached SCSI (SAS), the most popular protocol for high-speed hard drives and SSDs in enterprise applications, currently provides a maximum performance of 6 Gbps, with older models running at 3 Gbps. The new 12-Gbps version of SAS is backward compatible with 6-Gbps equipment.

With two 12-Gbps SAS interface ports, the new SSD can read and write data at a full 12-Gbps second speed, giving the drives a total bandwidth of 4.8 GBs per second, HGST said.

In addition to demonstrating 12-Gbps SAS interoperability, the SCSI Trade Association last month said it expects to also demonstrate SCSI Express, a new industry initiative for bringing storage to Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe). SCSI Express utilizes the SCSI over PCIe (SOP) and PCIe architecture queuing interface (PQI).