16/02/2009
When OCZ first announced their Vertex line of SSDs as a premium MLC-based offering, the question that was surely on many people's minds was what SSD controller it used. Early MLC-based SSDs utilized the faulty JMicron JMF602 controller, causing them to suffer from horrendous random write speeds and latencies. Well now we have confirmation that the Vertex series will be using a different controller. The Indilinx Barefoot to be exact.
The Indilinx Barefoot was first announced last August as a second generation SSD controller, boasting capabilities to allow for up to 230MB/s / 170MB/s read/write speeds with SLC flash and 200MB/s / 160MB/s read/write speeds with MLC flash. The Barefoot has a capacity level of up to 512GB with MLC-based NAND flash and sports a 64MB data buffer.
Shipment of the Vertex drives have been delayed due to OCZ wanting to release the drives with the latest firmware to provide maximum performance without forcing the consumers to deal with updating it themselves. This wait may be worth it in other ways as well. The cost of component acquisition and drive production is now lower than expected, and thus the cost of the drives will be lower than first believed when the series was announced last December.
The Vertex series will come in 30GB, 60GB, 120GB, and 250GB flavors, with the former two bearing a 32MB cache and the higher capacity drives having a 64MB cache. While no concrete shipping date has been set, OCZ hopes to release the drives before the end of February.
Update:
OCZ recently did some internal tests on an empty Vertex drive with the new tweaked firmware, and the results are impressive to say the least. These tests show that the firmware allows the drives to exceed Indilinx's original speed specifications for the Barefoot controller, blazing forth with read speeds of up to 250MB/s and write speeds of up to 240MB/s. This puts the Vertex line right up there with Intel's top-level X-25E SSD line at a significantly lower price and greater capacity.
Will the Vertex line bring performance SSDs closer to being a mainstream option?
Discuss in our Forums
When OCZ first announced their Vertex line of SSDs as a premium MLC-based offering, the question that was surely on many people's minds was what SSD controller it used. Early MLC-based SSDs utilized the faulty JMicron JMF602 controller, causing them to suffer from horrendous random write speeds and latencies. Well now we have confirmation that the Vertex series will be using a different controller. The Indilinx Barefoot to be exact.
The Indilinx Barefoot was first announced last August as a second generation SSD controller, boasting capabilities to allow for up to 230MB/s / 170MB/s read/write speeds with SLC flash and 200MB/s / 160MB/s read/write speeds with MLC flash. The Barefoot has a capacity level of up to 512GB with MLC-based NAND flash and sports a 64MB data buffer.
Shipment of the Vertex drives have been delayed due to OCZ wanting to release the drives with the latest firmware to provide maximum performance without forcing the consumers to deal with updating it themselves. This wait may be worth it in other ways as well. The cost of component acquisition and drive production is now lower than expected, and thus the cost of the drives will be lower than first believed when the series was announced last December.
The Vertex series will come in 30GB, 60GB, 120GB, and 250GB flavors, with the former two bearing a 32MB cache and the higher capacity drives having a 64MB cache. While no concrete shipping date has been set, OCZ hopes to release the drives before the end of February.
Update:
OCZ recently did some internal tests on an empty Vertex drive with the new tweaked firmware, and the results are impressive to say the least. These tests show that the firmware allows the drives to exceed Indilinx's original speed specifications for the Barefoot controller, blazing forth with read speeds of up to 250MB/s and write speeds of up to 240MB/s. This puts the Vertex line right up there with Intel's top-level X-25E SSD line at a significantly lower price and greater capacity.
Will the Vertex line bring performance SSDs closer to being a mainstream option?
Discuss in our Forums