OCZ Announces SandForce Based PCIe RevoDrive SSD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 31, 2010 10:33 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
- Storage
- SSDs
- OCZ
- Computex 2010
- RevoDrive
PCIe based SSDs have been reserved for enterprise use ever since their introduction. Generally limited by pricing, even OCZ's own forays into the PCIe SSD market have been targeted at enterprise customers. That may all change with today's announcement. Meet the RevoDrive:
Click to Enlarge
This PCIe x4 card takes a pair of SF-1200 controllers and RAIDs them together, giving you roughly the performance of two SF-1200 SSDs but on a single card. Through some unique component selection OCZ aims to keep costs around 10 - 20% more than a single drive. Obviously you lose TRIM support and the overall performance should be no different than a pair of SF-1200s in RAID (on a good controller/chipset), but if you need PCIe this may be an option.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
32 Comments
View All Comments
newrigel - Sunday, June 20, 2010 - link
Mac??somedude1234 - Monday, June 21, 2010 - link
I'm a bit late on the comment, but...The SF-1200 is a SATA-II to flash controller chip. You're still fundamentally limited by the SATA-II interface. Whatever RAID controller they put on the card, it still talks to the two SF-1200's via SATA-II.
PCI-e 1.1 x 4 gives you 1000 MBps in each direction, which is more than enough for two SATA-II interfaces, which can provide at most 600 MBps.
The Fusion-IO cards use a purpose-built PCI-e to flash controller, which eliminates the SATA speed bottleneck but also substantially increases costs. By pairing a COTS flash controller with a COTS RAID controller, OCZ is able to offer a PCI-e SSD at a much lower price point, but at the expense of performance.
This is a cool development, as it brings moderate-performance PCI-e SSD's at a much more accessible price point.