All-flash storage vendor Pure Storage this week unveiled its latest memory controllers that are designed to increase performance compared with past models. The company also announced financial results that surpassed market estimates. 

The company’s third-generation all-non-volatile memory express (NVMe) FlashArray//X controllers provide a 25% speed boost compared with its previous generation FlashArray product. It also includes additional memory for more processing power thanks to the addition of Intel’s Xeon Scalable Processor – formerly known as Cascade Lake – which hit the shelves three days ago.

Matt Kixmoeller VP of strategy at Pure Storage, told SDxCentral that the added performance will enable customers to adopt this technology at their pace and without the need to choose array performance over capacity, or vice versa.

In addition to the Intel processor, Pure Storage’s third-generation array line now includes 1 terabyte (TB) of the vendors DirectFlash Modules, which is a 100% NVMe controller-free module, on its entry-level //X10 and //X20 arrays. Non-volatile memory express over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) performance was previously only available on its top-line //X70 and //X90 arrays.

Further, no controllers means no software is required to run on the DirectFlash Module, allowing the storage system to access 100% of the raw storage on the module. It also continues to  support NVMe-oF and storage class memory (SCM).

Kixmoeller said that based on internal testing the new product delivers a 50% performance improvement in SAP HANA deployments when compared to the previous generation; 50% faster performance with 35% lower latency for MySQL compared to direct attached storage (DAS); and 20% faster performance and 12% lower latency for PostgreSQL compared to DAS.

The new platform is available through its utility-based consumption model for hardware and software updates, support, and maintenance. The company calls this model a “non-disruptive path” to the new storage controllers that support NVMe, but also to the NVMe media itself without the heavy forklift upgrade to get the latest technology. 

Despite ongoing macro-economic uncertainty such as the China-U.S. trade war and the coronavirus, Pure Storage still delivered an impressive fourth quarter. The company came in ahead of  analyst expectations with $492 million in revenue for the quarter with 17% growth year over year. For the year, it generated $1.9 billion in revenue, up 21% from the year prior. 

Steve McDowell, senior analyst for storage and converged systems at Moor Insights & Strategy, attributed Pure’s success to a “simplified product line that delivers a consistent experience from entry-level to cloud.”

“Pure’s performance stands in stark contrast to its closest competitors in the enterprise storage market for the same periods, which have delivered relatively flat to negative growth and are predicting the same for the coming year,” McDowell said.