A RamSan drive has an access time of 15 microseconds, 250 times faster than a hard disk drive. A good hard disk drive provides 250-300 random I/O's per second. InfiniBand-based RamSan drives offer up to 50,000 random IOPS per single-ported controller, 200,000 random IOPS with four controllers.

It's available today in engineering sample form. Mass production is planned for next year and OEM pricing is available upon request.

This product is a reminder of how quickly flash memory drives are developing. Another is the idea of 30GB USB thumb drives carrying entire PC software stacks.

(Additional reporting by with Chris Mellor)