OCZ'z Vertex 3 Pro Demo: World's First SandForce SF-2000
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 5, 2011 9:37 PM ESTOCZ Z-Drive R3
OCZ also demonstrated the new Z-Drive R3, a PCIe SSD with four SF-1500 controllers behind a Marvell RAID controller. The end result is the performance of four SandForce SSDs in RAID-0 on a single half-height PCIe card:
OCZ ran a quick run of ATTO on the Z-Drive R3 at the show, showing peak reads/writes of 1GB/s.
New 3.5” Chassis
OCZ also demonstrated a new, slimmer chassis for its 3.5” SSDs like the Vertex 2 and Agility 2:
On the other end of the spectrum, OCZ presented an even bigger (physically) drive: the IBIS XL. Now this isn’t going to be productized, but it’s simply something to test the waters with. The IBIS XL fits into a standard 5.25” drive by and starts at 4TB.
Speaking of IBIS, OCZ plans to bring an optical version of the IBIS’ HSDL interface to the market. OCZ didn’t have a live demo of optical HSDL, but here’s a shot of an optical HSDL card:
Unfortunately OCZ has yet to convince any motherboard makers to implement HSDL ports on boards, so at this point the standard continues to be quite limited.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
62 Comments
View All Comments
B3an - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link
Can anyone tell me how i could RAID these drives with 6Gb/s on a motherboard with no SATA 6Gb/s?Are there any PCI-E RAID controllers for this that dont cost a ton?
tipoo - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link
When a startup can compete with a giant. Right now it looks as if Sandforce, with limited funds and only a relative handful of employees, is the only company that can put up a fight against the mighty Intel controller.bobbozzo - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link
Please explain the compression comments and tables... is the drive compressing all data?Thanks,
Bob
dertechie - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link
That's part of the Sandforce secret sauce. The control ASIC has some amount of (probably fixed function) compression/decompression hardware. This is what gets them their low write amplification and their fast speeds. As you can see, the controller is still fast if it can't compress the data, but not as fast as it is when you feed it something highly compressible.janon123 - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link
What is the total 4KB random writes that can be done to each drive type in its lifespan?Intel X25-E (G3) 25nm eMLC 100GB is rated at 900TB-1PB total 4KB random writes.
janon123 - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link
and are any of these Vertex 3 drives capacitor-backed?DarkRogue - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link
I would assume the slide that reads "Power loss data protection" would mean it includes a cap to flush data to NAND in the event of a power loss.AbRASiON - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
Over 180mb/s 4k READS is what I've been waiting for.This SSD, coupled with an absoloute meaty CPU and lots of ram will be awesome.
Forget sequential read and writes, they are mostly meaningless rubbish once they get over 200mb/s - this baby is going to load games and applications exceedingly quick. Damn glad I skipped the C300.
I am eager I tell you.
qax - Saturday, January 8, 2011 - link
I would like to see 2 of these controllers on af PCI-E PCB.amjustice - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
I was holding off on getting a new SSD to put in my Macbook Pro until this next gen of drives comes out. Since I do not have the proper controller on my MBP to do 6GBPS is it worth it to wait still? Will I be able to see some of the benefits of speed in these drives?