Looking for some really fast nonvolatile storage? DDRdrive delivers doubledata- rate (DDR) performance with NAND nonvolatility. Its DDRdrive X1 adds an FPGA between a PCI Express Gen 1 interface, 4 Gbytes of DDR2 memory, and 4 Gbytes of NAND flash (see the figure). The FPGA handles all transactions including backup from RAM to flash.
The RAM provides the highthroughput characteristics. It’s essentially a full-size cache for the NAND storage. A full backup from RAM to flash takes 60 seconds. Incremental backup is much faster.
The full-height, half-length board plugs into a standard PCI Express x1 slot. A Windows device driver provides a low-overhead interface to storage. A Linux driver is in the works. Operating-system software-based spanning or redundant array of disks (RAID) support can take advantage of multiple X1s in the same system.
Maximum power consumption is 9.91 W. Average power draw is under 5 W. Pricing starts at $1495. An external power supply can be connected to a UPS.
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