OCZ Demonstrates Native PCIe SSDs: Z-Drive R5 in PCIe, mini-PCIe and 2.5" Form Factors
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 5, 2012 2:06 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
- Storage
- SSDs
- Marvell
- OCZ
- Z-Drive R5
- Computex 2012
OCZ showed us its Kilimanjaro based Z-Drive R5 (native PCIe controller jointly developed with Marvell) running a 4KB random write test at Computex today. The drive was pushing as much as 800K 4KB random write IOPS, although by the time we got to the demo the drive had been dirtied to the point that it was delivering around 570K IOPS and over 2GB/s.
The R5 features sixteen PCIe 2.0 x1 Kilimanjaro controllers behind a PCIe 3.0 x8 switch, enabling tons of bandwidth.
OCZ also had physical samples of its 2.5" PCIe and mini-PCIe Kilimanjaro platforms. Remember Kilimanjaro is a native PCIe SSD controller so there's no SATA to be found on the board. The 2.5" PCIe device uses a standard SSD form factor but with a PCIe connector. There are two controllers behind a PCIe switch on the 2.5" drive, while the mini-PCIe drive features a single controller.
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vectorm12 - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Good to see OCZ stepping up and starting to offer native PCIe controllers. Really looking forward to seeing what they can manage on the price/capacity scale. I'd really love to start deploying 1TB units in workstations but thus far cost and questionable endurance have kept it from becoming a reality.happycamperjack - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Vertex 4 is good enough for workstations. Servers + databases benefit more from these guysnathanddrews - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Good enough?No such thing. :D
SleepyFE - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Vertex 4, Samsung 830, Intel 520, 720, 910Per Hansson - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Is it possible to boot from these drives?I guess with a "normal" mainboard the answer is no?
But is boot support something that is doable over PCIe at all?
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
There are many PCIe SSDs that support booting. At this point it's hard to say if this one supports booting, though.zanon - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Since there is no SATA involved I don't think it can be AHCI compliant, which means at the least it is unlikely it'd be plug and play like PCIe SSDs which do that. If it's not out there already I hope the industry can come up with something similar, or maybe even incorporate it into a 1.4 revision to AHCI post haste. Native PCIe looks exciting, but the thought of having to always deal with special drivers for storage like the bad old days is significantly less exciting.Kevin G - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
While there is no native SATA, they could provide a software emulation layer on the controller to adhere to existing standards and allow booting. This is just technical speculation on my part.SleepyFE - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Do the ones that support booting have native PCIe SSD controllers?ctyau - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Do you know if this is NVMe or another PCIe to SATA/SAS bridge card?