OCZ 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.

OCZ's Vertex 3 Pro
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  • DoktorSleepless - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link

    "50-400gb usable"
    Well, that's really disappointing. I was hoping for the 60-480 scheme from the current drives.
  • vol7ron - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link

    I think you touched on something I wanted to bring up.

    I care less about how much manufacturers are using to make their drives work/perform and more about what can actually be used. The 50-400 is the important number and the one I urge companies to start using, uniformly. The other number should just be left in the specs for enthusiasts consideration.
  • strikeback03 - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link

    Maybe with 25nm NAND they will go back to more spare area, but I wouldn't be surprised if the first drives out are more enterprise focused and have more spare area, like the SF-1200/1500 launch. Then maybe drives with less spare area would come later.
  • iwodo - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link

    Once again we have Raw performance numbers.

    Tell me how an Toshiba SSD with lower Seq / Random Read Write numbers manage to beat an Sandforce or Intel SSD then we will start talking.

    Impressive as they may sound, i would like to see some real Anand benchmark before i make the judgement.
  • probedb - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link

    Did you miss the "very, *very* early silicon and hardware"?
  • BugblatterIII - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link

    We've seen before that the larger drives have far better performance due to their greater number of banks. Was it the 512GB drive you tested?
  • semo - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link

    Interested about that too. The C400 for example seems still a mediocre SSD by today's standards at 64GB.

    "both Micron and Intel beating it to the punch" -- We know that the Micron/Crucials are coming out soon from your previous article but not sure what's the latest on the Intels

    "OCZ also demonstrated a new, slimmer chassis for its 3.5” SSDs like the Vertex 2 and Agility 2" -- Did you mean 2.5"? I guess they would be 7mm high?

    "Obviously to hit these speeds you obviously need a 6Gbps controller" -- obviously :)
  • jonup - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link

    No, Anand meant 3.5" SSDs. These have been available for a while now. They are slimmer than 3.5" but fit in the normal 3.5" holes. I have the suspicion that you can fit two of these in a single 3.5" bay because of how thin they are, but I have not tested it since I have played around with only one.
  • semo - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link

    Thanks didn't know that. I thought only the IBIS and colossus were available in 3.5"
  • vol7ron - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link

    "I have the suspicion that you can fit two of these in a single 3.5" bay because of how thin they are"

    I'm sure you could, but are there any heat concerns?

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