New SandForce SSD Controller SF-1000 Revealed

Quietly working on a new SSD controller for the past three years, SandForce announced a new family of solid-state disk (SSD) processors, the SF-1000, today. According to the company based in Saratoga, California, this new technology is supposed to "address the inherent endurance, reliability, and data retention issues associated with NAND flash memory, making it possible to build SSDs that deliver unprecedented performance over the life of the drive with orders-of-magnitude higher reliability than enterprise-class HDDs (Hard Disk Drives)."

"The SF-1000 SSD Processor Family promises to address key NAND flash issues allowing MLC flash technologies to be reliably used in broad based, mission critical storage environments," said Mike Desens, Vice President for System Design, IBM.

SandForce claims that this new controller can improve MLC sequential read/writes to 250MB/sec., while it's new firmware DuraWrite, supposedly extends "flash rated endurance by 80x or more when compared to standard controllers."

Another part of its new technology is called RAISE "(Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements), which delivers an orders-of-magnitude improvement in drive reliability versus today