OWC Mercury PCIe SSDs Coming With SandForce SF-2000 Processors in 2011

[Oberhammer]

OWC Mercury PCIe SSDs Coming With SandForce SF-2000 Processors in 2011

Other World Computing (OWC) announced today it has begun developing OWC Mercury Extreme Pro Enterprise PCIe Solid State Drive (SSD) Solutions that will feature the SandForce SF-2000 second generation processor announced today and being demonstrated by SandForce at Storage Networking World next week. OWC’s 8x and 16x PCIe SSD cards will be available with up to eight SSDs for capacities up to 3.2TB, offer up to 4GB/s sequential Reads/Writes and up to 480K IOPS, provide 28% over provisioning for data reliability, and double data encryption for security assurance. Exact pricing and model configurations for the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro Enterprise PCIe Solid State Drive (SSD) cards will be announced in early 2011.

The OWC Mercury Extreme Pro Enterprise PCIe Solid State Drive (SSD) cards will be an ideal solution for I/O intensive enterprise servers, storage arrays, and high-end workstations in the financial, telecom, web/mail, gaming, public security, retail, and professional media creation/editing industries. With robust Native Command Queuing to enable up to 32 concurrent operations, OWC Mercury Extreme Pro Enterprise PCIe Solid State Drive (SSD) cards will deliver significantly higher Input/Output Operations per Second (IOPS) and throughput performance – up to 480K IOPS - than other SSD technology on the market today, as well as dramatically outperform traditional hard disk drive solutions.

http://legitreviews.com/images/news/2010/owc_mercury.jpg

Yum Yum....

Here is a little bit more info:

Faster Writes To Keep Pace With Reads
Because it’s critical to have balanced read and write speeds to provide highest enterprise class system performance, the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro Enterprise PCIe Solid State Drive (SSD) cards maximize the throughput of PCIe 2.0 technology bandwidth so write speeds can achieve the highest level of read speeds up to 4GB/s. Also, by utilizing the second generation SandForce SF-2000 series processor with non-512B sector support, the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro Enterprise PCIe Solid State Drive (SSD) cards will maintain high performance in SAS environments.

Built In Hardware RAID Engine
Whether users are seeking the pure speed of RAID 0, or the protection of redundancy via RAID 5 or 10, the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro Enterprise PCIe SSD cards will use an advanced on-board RAID engine to offer the convenience of optional RAID levels. And while advanced TRIM is fully supported, the DuraClass advanced internal data and wear leveling management technology reduces the need for it, thereby eliminating TRIM set up and maintenance issues in RAID environments.

Reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Unlike traditional hard disk drives, the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro Enterprise PCIe Solid State Drive (SSD) cards will have no moving parts, resulting in a quieter, cooler running, and lower power consuming storage solution. Now the same server workload can be handled in a more cost efficient manner over a longer usage period, thereby reducing TCO.

Field Upgradable For Future Expansion
The OWC Mercury Extreme Pro Enterprise PCIe Solid State Drive (SSD) cards utilize interchangeable drive modules in place of permanent, surface-mounted NAND to allow customers to upgrade their card in the field and maximize their initial investment.

Continued Use Of Proven DuraClass Technology
While offering a variety of new features over its existing award-winning consumer class Mercury Extreme Pro line (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal ... _Sandforce), the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro Enterprise PCIe SSD cards will continue to utilize SandForce DuraClass™ technology. The ultra-efficient block management & wear leveling built into every OWC SSD has been proven to prevent write speed degradation commonly experienced by other SSD brands. Along with consistent, reliable speed, the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro Enterprise PCIe SSD cards will provide up to 100X higher data protection than provided by ordinary SSDs as well as leading enterprise class hard disk drives. By combining best in class Error Correction Code (ECC) and SandForce RAISE™ (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) technology, the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro Enterprise PCIe SSD cards will provide RAID like data protection and reliability without loss of transfer speed due to parity.

[alphaod]

As long as it's bootable, it's cool. Otherwise meh.

[ovrlrd]

As long as it's bootable, it's cool. Otherwise meh.

Agreed but I have a feeling it won't be bootable without some serious hacking. :(

[Oberhammer]

As long as it's bootable, it's cool. Otherwise meh.

I suspect it will be bootable like the Revodrive.

Even if it isn't, it will be a nice drive to have.

[dissolve]

This is really the way to go instead of SATA 6. Hopefully they'll be able to keep costs relatively close to the 2.5" SATA offerings.

[johnnymg]

Like the current OCZ PCIe drives but cheaper and faster? :confused:........... :cool:

[deconstruct60]

Hopefully they'll be able to keep costs relatively close to the 2.5" SATA offerings.

chuckle, not likely. Note the marketing adjectives. "Extreme" , "Pro" , "Enterprise". Any one of those is an indicator that you are going to paying top dollar. A combination of three practically assures it. Find me any product with just two of those adjectives slapped on it that sells for average pricing let alone three.

It is upgradable, which means can crack it open and fiddle with it. Again not something that contains costs. 2-3 times the I/O throughput of any expensive 2.5 drive.

On card RAID 10 and 5 . (presumably with multiple storage modules plug into the card. )

This isn't a apps binary data boot drive.

This is where you put you limited size DB data mart so can do crazy fast analytics. Or where put scratch info or real time logging files.

[philipma1957]

...Mercury Extreme Pro line ... (Sandforce)[/QUOTE]

broken link

[SMCX]

...Mercury Extreme Pro line ... (Sandforce)

broken link[/QUOTE]

source: http://forums.legitreviews.com/about30171.html

[philipma1957]

thanks I checked out the link and OWC is yet to update. I would like one of them if it boots. I will need to wait and see.

[dissolve]

chuckle, not likely. Note the marketing adjectives. "Extreme" , "Pro" , "Enterprise". Any one of those is an indicator that you are going to paying top dollar. A combination of three practically assures it. Find me any product with just two of those adjectives slapped on it that sells for average pricing let alone three.

It is upgradable, which means can crack it open and fiddle with it. Again not something that contains costs. 2-3 times the I/O throughput of any expensive 2.5 drive.

On card RAID 10 and 5 . (presumably with multiple storage modules plug into the card. )

This isn't a apps binary data boot drive.

This is where you put you limited size DB data mart so can do crazy fast analytics. Or where put scratch info or real time logging files.

You're right, this is going to be expensive. I also thought SATA 6 SSDs were a lot more than they are. Maybe in a couple years PCIe SSDs will become a little more mainstream / consumer friendly. Here's to hoping :rolleyes: