OCZ prods Z-Drive to go faster
2TB and upgradable flash modules
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OCZ has boosted the speed and doubled the capacity of its solid state Z-Drive as well as making it upgradable with interchangeable NAND modules.
The existing Z-Drive 1 is a PCI-e connected 256GB-1TB solid state drive (SSD) with good performance: up to 800GB/sec read, 750GB/sec write and a 500MB/sec sustained write speed for the 1TB model. One model used single level cell (SLC) flash but the others MLC (multi-level cell).
This second generation Z-Drive has a 512GB to 2TB capacity range, all of it using MLC flash. Its 1TB performance figures are up to 1.4GB/sec read and write, and 950MB/sec sustained write. These are good numbers.
We can compare performance roughly with Fusion-io and LSI PCIe SSD. A 512GB Z-Drive does up to 1.3GB/sec read, up to 1GB/sec write and up to 550GB/sec sustained writes. LSI's SSS6200 has a 300GB of SLC flash capacity and its sustained bandwidth is 1.5GB/sec for reads and 1.2GB/sec for writes. The Fusion-io 640GB SMLC flash IoDrive Duo offers 1.4GB/sec read bandwidth and 1.0GB/sec write bandwidth (32K packet size).
The Z-Drive is slower than both the Fusion-io and LSI products but its capacity does go up to 2TB with the p88 product. There are also p84 and m84 products which have a 256MB-1TB capacity range.
The first iteration of the Z-Drive used permanent surface-mounted NAND. Z-Drive R2 NAND modules are carried on a daughter card, with four hot-swappable modules. These can be replaced, a feature which OCZ says is unique. Duff modules can be replaced in the field and hopefully when higher-capacity modules are available they could be used to replaced the existing ones. Today's 2TB Z-Drive could then likely become a 4TB one
OCZ says its the only bootable PCIe SSD available as well. The product has 8 PCIe lanes and either 4 or 8 SATA lanes. It has either an 8-way or 4-way RAID 0 configuration and uses Indilinx controllers and a 512KB cache. These are standard specs - OEMs can get customised versions.
There will be a three-year warranty. OCZ says the product is going to enter mass-production and isn't releasing pricing and specific availability data yet. Hexus speculates that the 2TB version could cost around £4,000. ®
COMMENTS
electrocution?
Agreed its a bit beyond the engineering competence of most IT Managers. I think you'll find your chances of getting electrocuted are rather greater doing the ironing than changing a component in a PC, most of the voltages are extremely low.
Hotswappable Flash Modules are BRILLIANT!
...because every IT manager wants to stick his hand inside of a powered server trying to yank out two-inch-long chips. No, that's not looking to cause damage to the server or worse yet get electrocuted AT ALL. Health Insurance much?
The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.
The units seem to be jumping around an awful lot -
800GB/sec read, 750GB/sec write and a 500MB/sec sustained
up to 1.3GB/sec read, up to 1GB/sec write and up to 550GB/sec sustained writes.
:-)
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