IBM Quicksilver SSD passes 1 million IO operations per second mark

In the field of SSD enterprise-level flash drives, IBM Research has hit a new benchmark. Based on their own  SAN Volume Controller SVC, and using SSD developed by Fusion-io, their project Quicksilver surpassed the 1 million IOPS threshold. From their press release,

The results were achieved using Flash solid-state technology coupled with IBM’s industry leading, highly scalable storage virtualization technology. Under the codename “Project Quicksilver,” IBM achieved groundbreaking results in transferring data at a sustained rate of over one million Input/Output (I/O) per second — with a response time of under one millisecond (ms). Compared to the fastest industry benchmarked disk system(1) Quicksilver improved performance by 250 percent at less than 1/20th the response time, took up 1/5th the floor space and required only 55 percent of the power and cooling.

While these are obviously designated for production in high-level enterprise contexts, the increasing focus on SSD storage in terms of energy conservation bodes well for the ultimate ratiocination of SSD in embedded devices. Now it only remains to be seen how long before solar inverter and silicon cell technology develop before such a decrease in power consumption gets seen on a consumer power management scale.