HGST introduced the first NVMe-compliant PCIe SSDs from their SanDisk brand. The Skyhawk PCIe SSDs are optimized to give a balance of fast and consistent performance, cost-effect storage to address unstructured data center workloads for cloud environments.

For cloud workloads that need higher throughput and faster response time, historically SATA SSDs provide high performance and low power requirements. The SATA interface is also ubiquitous on the servers used in cloud data centers.

The current version, SATA III, is almost nine years old and capped at 6 gigabits per second, without plans to improve performance or reduce latency. NVMe protocol circumvents SATA bottlenecks for improved performance and reduced latency (response time). NVMe's direct connection to the CPU via PCIe streamlines the storage device stack and is significantly faster than the traditional SATA interface.

The new Skyhawk NVMe-compatible PCIe SSDs offers up to 3.84TB in capacity and comes in a highly serviceable U.2, 2.5-inch SFF with a PCIe interface.

The Skyhawk SSD also integrates Western Digital's 15nm NAND Flash with a new PCIe Gen 3 SSD controller. Its Guardian Technology platform guarantees Enterprise Class reliability, endurance and performance.

In addition, Skyhawk's lower 12W power envelope enables broader deployment compared to 25W PCIe SSDs.

The drive is available in two write endurance swim lanes (Standard and Ultra) and is currently sampling to select OEMs, with general availability Q2 of this calendar year.