OCZ's Fastest SSD, The IBIS and HSDL Interface Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 29, 2010 12:01 AM ESTMeet the IBIS
OCZ sent us the basic IBIS kit. Every IBIS drive will come with a free 1-port PCIe card. Drive capacities range from 100GB all the way up to 960GB:
| OCZ IBIS Lineup | ||||
| Part Number | Capacity | MSRP | ||
| OCZ3HSD1IBS1-960G | 960GB | $2799 | ||
| OCZ3HSD1IBS1-720G | 720GB | $2149 | ||
| OCZ3HSD1IBS1-480G | 480GB | $1299 | ||
| OCZ3HSD1IBS1-360G | 360GB | $1099 | ||
| OCZ3HSD1IBS1-240G | 240GB | $739 | ||
| OCZ3HSD1IBS1-160G | 160GB | $629 | ||
| OCZ3HSD1IBS1-100G | 100GB | $529 | ||
Internally the IBIS is a pretty neat design. There are two PCBs, each with two SF-1200 controllers and associated NAND. They plug into a backplane with a RAID controller and a chip that muxes the four PCIe lanes that branch off the controller into the HSDL signal. It's all custom OCZ PCB-work, pretty impressive.
This is the sandwich of PCBs inside the IBIS chassis
Pull the layers apart and you get the on-drive RAID/HSDL board (left) and the actual SSD cards (right)
Four SF-1200 controllers in parallel, this thing is fast
There’s a standard SATA power connector and an internal mini-SAS connector. The pinout of the connector is proprietary however, plugging it into a SAS card won’t work. OCZ chose the SAS connector to make part sourcing easier and keep launch costs to a minimum (designing a new connector doesn’t make things any easier).
The IBIS bundle includes a HSDL cable, which is a high quality standard SAS cable. Apparently OCZ found signal problems with cheaper SAS cables. OCZ has validated HSDL cables at up to half a meter, which it believes should be enough for most applications today. There obviously may be some confusion caused by OCZ using the SAS connector for HSDL but I suspect if the standard ever catches on OCZ could easily switch to a proprietary connector.
The 1-port PCIe card only supports PCIe 1.1, while the optional 4-port card supports PCIe 1.1 and 2.0 and will auto-negotiate speed at POST.
The bundled 1-port PCIe card
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mroos - Friday, November 5, 2010 - link
What PCI device do these IBISes provide? Is it something standard like AHCI that has drivers for every OS, or something proprietary that needs new driver written and integrated into all relevant OS-es?mroos - Friday, November 5, 2010 - link
OK, it looks like the interface to host is SiI 3124. This is widely supported sata HBA and has drivers for most operating systems.But SiI3124 is just SATA host controller - no RAID. So the RAID must be done host side, or sofRAID in other words. It also means Linux should see 4 distinct SSD devices.
paralou - Saturday, April 9, 2011 - link
Hello,I don't remember if i already posted my question, sorry !
But in installed one IBIS 160GB using the following configurated computer:
ASUS P6T WS Pro (latest BIOS & drivers)
Intel i7 Core 965 Extreme 3.2GHz
Kingston DDR3 1600MHz - 12GB
nVIDIA Quadro FX4800 grphics card
2 Seagate SAS 450GB
Microsoft Windows 7 Pro
After installing Win7 without problems, i installed antivirus BitDefender, several app's (including Adobe package and Microsoft Office Pro), configured Updates NOT AUTOMATIC !
When i stopped my computer, system started downloading 92 Upgrades (without my permission) ?
When i restarted..Crash error 0x80070002
Impossible to restor (i made an image system, but day before !)
Reinstalled, and while i was typing the Key codes for the Microsoft Vision Pro ..
An other crash ! Same problem !
My opinion, about the IBIS HSDL box, it's a very poor assembly design!
Impossible to connec the supply connector on it, and i must dismantle the front plater to have access to the supply connector !
Now, i wonder if i have to follow OCZ's advice about the BIOS configuration?
They are saying:
" You must set you BIOS to use "S1 Sleep Mode" for proper operation.
Using S3 or AUTO may cause instability ".
And what about the internal HDD's ?
Is there any member who already installed such IBIS and use it regularely.
If the answer is Yes (?) can you please tell me how you configured your system ?
Regards,
Paralou
MySchizoBuddy - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link
OCZ doesn't have PCIe x16 option like FusionIO ioDrive Octal which takes the reads to 6GB/s