Updated: OCZ's Petrol SSD: More Affordable Indilinx Everest
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 13, 2011 12:32 PM ESTLast month OCZ introduced the Octane, its first SSD based on the now in-house Indilinx Everest controller. The drive did reasonably well in our tests and was priced competitively with similar 6Gbps solutions from Micron and Samsung. The only unknown is reliability at this point but we're taking a wait and see approach to Everest and Octane to answer that point.
While we wait for more user reports of Octane compatibility and reliability, OCZ is releasing its second drive based on the Indilinx Everest controller: the Petrol. Still a 6Gbps SATA drive, Petrol drops IMFT synchronous NAND in favor of cheaper non-IMFT asynchronous NAND (somehwat similar to the Agility 3 vs. Vertex 3, although both of those drives used IMFT NAND).
The slower NAND drops peak performance a bit but it should also help hit lower price points. OCZ hasn't released much info about the Petrol lineup (including pricing) other than to say that it will be available in the coming weeks. I've compiled a table of what we do know below.
Update: OCZ has given us pricing on the four capacities: $89.99, $149.99, $339.99 and $649.99 for the 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB Petrol drives. This works out to be a savings of $50, $30 and $240 at 128GB, 256GB and 512GB compared to the Octane.
OCZ Indilinx Everest Lineup | ||||||||
Petrol | Octane 1TB | Octane 512GB | Octane 256GB | Octane 128GB | ||||
NAND Type | Non-Intel Async MLC | 25nm Intel Sync MLC | 25nm Intel Sync MLC | 25nm Intel Sync MLC | 25nm Intel Sync MLC | |||
NAND | 64GB - 512GB | 1TB | 512GB | 256GB | 128GB | |||
User Capacity | - | 953GiB | 476GiB | 238GiB | 119GiB | |||
Random Read Performance | Up to 35K IOPS | Up to 45K IOPS | Up to 37K IOPS | Up to 37K IOPS | Up to 37K IOPS | |||
Random Write Performance | ? | Up to 19.5K IOPS | Up to 16K IOPS | Up to 12K IOPS | Up to 7.7K IOPS | |||
Sequential Read Performance | Up to 400MB/s | Up to 560 MB/s | Up to 535 MB/s | Up to 535 MB/s | Up to 535 MB/s | |||
Sequential Write Performance | Up to 400MB/s | Up to 400 MB/s | Up to 400 MB/s | Up to 270 MB/s | Up to 170 MB/s | |||
MSRP | $90 - $650 | TBD | $879.99 | $369.99 | $199.99 |
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icrf - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
Honest question: is it doing Micron a disservice by referring to IMFT flash memory as "Intel MLC"VxRaptor - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 - link
It is Intel - Micron.. Its a 50 -50 joint venture !ShieTar - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
Well, since consumers don't buy flash cells directly, I don't think Micron needs to care. But yeah, Anand may not get a Christmas Card from Micron this year ;-)Coup27 - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
IMFT = Intel Micron Flash Technologies.I am not sure as to the exact percentages of ownership, but Micron has 51% of the NAND for their customers and Intel have 49% of the NAND for their customers.
This means that although the NAND is manufactured in the same fab, Micron's customers get an M logo on their NAND, Intel customers get an Intel logo (figure of speech).
OCZ have been using NAND bought from Intel, thus he is calling it Intel NAND.
gkaplan - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
It would be an added bonus if you could include drive height when writing overviews; I own a Lenovo X220 which is limited to 7mm drive heights. Just a "nice to have". :-)lancid81 - Thursday, December 15, 2011 - link
Right now.. Samsungs 830 series is the only SSD I know of that supports the 7mm height...lizardview - Thursday, December 15, 2011 - link
Why is reliability so hard for these drives? It is not like they are a new product? Obviously the technology landscape keeps shifting, but shouldn't overall reliability be coming down sequentially?Everyone has their own firmware, I guess because because their configurations are different, but it strikes me there is too wide a gap in 'reliability' (perceived or real)?
sunshinekhan - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
I would never recommend the Petrol to anybody until OCZ makes me happy; which I doubt!From a batch of about 80 OCZ Petrol (64Gb), 15 crashed on me within weeks, 10 Dead on Arrival.
This could be a case of a bad lot, but what happened to their QA / QC?
Tread cautiously with Petrol!