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OCZ goes SSD crazy at CES, leaves no port unplugged
OCZ came rolling into CES this year with a pile of SSDs in tow. Most are pretty firmly aimed at the enterprise market but, what's impressive, is how the company has made sure to cover practically every interface . If you're looking to fill up some PCIe slots, the Z-Drive R5 and are R4 CloudServ have you covered. The former is based on the Kilimanjaro platform, designed with help from Marvell, and can deliver a staggering 2.52 million IOPS and 7.2GB/s. The latter is an evolution of the existing R4 line, but with nearly double the performance in a card that can carry up to 16TB of solid state storage. If rack-mount servers are more your style, the SATA 3.0-packing Chiron delivers a respectable 560MB/s and 100,000 IOPS in a 3.5-inch package. The most exciting item, at least for consumers, is the Lightfoot -- an external, compact SSD ready to take over your under-utilized Thunderbolt port. Lightfoot will be available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB sizes, though, price and release dates are still very much up in the air. Check out the gallery below and complete PR (with a few more products) after the break.
OCZ Z-Drive R4 review roundup: this is what 2,800MB/s looks like
Assuming your local laws give you permission to drool, you might want to smack your lips and read on for some expert verdicts of OCZ's enterprise-level 2.8GB/s Z-Drive R4 PCIe SSD. If your statutory position is trickier, then maybe just do it quietly? Storage Review: the R4 "blew away the competition in nearly every test by a significant margin," even though it costs just $7/GB -- up to 40 percent less than its rivals. Hot Hardware: benchmarks support the ridiculous speed claims, but thermal sensitivity means the card must be constantly bathed in cool air. AnandTech: it's hard to compare the Z-Drive R4 because no other SSD comes close, but this type of technology has no track record for reliability and may therefore be a hard sell.
OCZ's Z-Drive R4 PCIe SSD offers 2,800MB/sec, 500,000 IOPS, plenty of thrills
Hard to believe that we spotted OCZ Technology's original Z-Drive at CeBIT 2009. Just over two full years have passed, and already we've seen the 600MB/sec claims offered on that fellow eclipsed by a few successors. Today, the latest in the line is making its debut, with the Z-Drive R4 offering 2,800MB/sec and over 500,000 IOPS with a single SuperScale controller; step up to a dualie, and you'll see 5,600MB/sec transfer rates coupled with 1.2 million input-output operations per second. Not surprisingly, this guy's aimed squarely at enterprise users -- folks who can genuinely take advantage of the speed, and are willing to pay the unpublished rates (yeah, we asked!) that go along with it. It's retaining the PCIe-based form factor, and will be shipped in two standard configurations: a half height version designed for space constrained 1U servers and multi-node rackmount servers, and a full height version. Each of those will be made available with SLC / MLC NAND flash memory, and as with all of OCZ's enterprise kit, customer-specific configurations and functionality are available upon request. Full release is after the break, big spender.
