OCZ announces new PCI-e SSD

OCZ has announced its latest Z-Drive. Revision 4 of the PCI Express SSD should enable speeds of up to 2800MB/s, thanks to the use of four to eight controllers. The solid state drive is primarily intended for servers.

The Z Drive R4 will be available in two formats: as a full height PCI Express card and as a “half height” card. The small cards fit into housings that have room for half-length cards; the larger cards are three quarters of the maximum size. The low-profile card is available in 300GB, 600GB and 1.2TB capacities, while the full-size card comes in 800GB, 1.6TB and 3.2TB capacities.

The cards interface with a server of eight PCI Express lanes, enough for 32Gb/s unidirectional bandwidth. The storage capacity is provided by mlc memory chips, which are controlled by four to eight SandForce controllers. An OCZ SuperScale Storage Controller covers the SSD controllers through OCZ’s Virtualized Controller Architecture. The drives achieve read and write throughput speeds of 2800MB/s. To prevent data loss, the drives are optionally equipped with Power Fail Protection technology.

The eight-controller cards achieve 410,000 iops when writing arbitrary data in 4KB blocks, while the maximum achievable write speed is 500,000 iops. The drives with four controllers achieve up to 260,000iops; when writing 4KB blocks, that’s 250,000iops. The drives support 128- and 256-bit AES encryption and trim, and come with a three-year warranty. Prices are not yet known.