back to article Super Talent flashes the big whopper

Solid state drive supplier Super Talent has added a PCIe-connected 2TB flash SSD, the RAIDDrive, to its product line, with versions for gamers, workstation and enterprise users. The drives support single layer cell (SLC) or multi-layer cell (MLC) flash. SLC flash is faster whereas MLC memory holds more data at less cost per GB …

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  1. Steven Jones

    Latency

    I hate this single minded concentration on throughput. The most important parameter with SSDs is what are the latency figures? Of particular interest is that for writes, especially small random writes (random reads tend to be OK). For many operations it is the random write latency that is the killer.

    Also for these type of devices to be usable as system disks it will need BIOS support which all booting from PCI-X slots.

  2. Jay
    Unhappy

    Interesting... how much is it going to cost I wonder?

    Title says it all!

  3. Richard
    Go

    Fast!

    I have been waiting for someone to free SSDs from the constraints of ordinary disk controllers.

    How long before there is a standard for something like this?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Estimated price:

    comfortably out of reach of most people

  5. John Robson Silver badge
    Boffin

    PCIe ssd should be released in

    expresscard format as well...

    I can deal with a boot partition on my HDD, then mount / from the ssd.

    An initrd from the spinny disk would be fine.

    But give me a low latency SSD using the PCIe interface of teh expresscard.

    Sell it on the basis of latency.

    Perfect upgrade for most "fairly" recent laptops.

    I'm sure even MS can do something similar, can't it????

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Richard

    Why?

    Disc Controllers can more than handle these speeds?

    Infact I would be suprised if this wasn't implemented as a disc controller with an attached disc from the operating systems POV.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Shafted

    Am I the only one who remembers the "Le Coq" hard drive, or did I dream it? It was a hard drive from a long time ago that looked like a bit like a cock (organ, not bird). As far as I remember its only practice use was a hard drive, i.e. it was not the right shape to use as a dildo, although I imagine the warmth and vibration would have been not entirely displeasing.

    If it *had* been a functional dildo, someone would be able to run a web server from within their own vagina. That would be something.

  8. Chris Silver badge

    @AC 11:20

    If the article is correct about the transfer rates being GBytes/sec rather than GBits/sec, then I think you'll find very few controllers would be able to keep up, and those that do are almost certainly not going to be found as standard on the average home/SOHO motherboard. PCIe slots, on the other hand...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Is this really a PCIe SSD?

    These new solutions are just small form factor SSD's with a PCIe controller all in a single metal enclosure. In fact the OCZ solution uses the RocketRAID controller. I'm not trying to put them down they have a space in the market but they're not a competitor to the pure enterprise PCIe solid state solutions we've been reading about.

    *if you see the metal enclosure it's probably just a PCIe RAID controller and 2.5" SSD's*

  10. Adam

    @Latency

    Depending on how it was implemented, it could be bootable from the box. If it presents itself to the system as just another storage controller card, it should be bootable.

    That being said, who would use a multi-terabyte drive as a boot volume? :S In my experience, large drives are used for storage of mass data, people like to keep their boot/OS/application volumes separate from their mass data.

  11. Nexox Enigma

    @ John Robson

    """PCIe ssd should be released in expresscard format as well..."""

    Actually there are plenty of expresscard ssds out there, most of which you could probably even boot from. The problem is that the format is too small (and too low power) to fit a decent amount of flash, lots of cache, and a high end storage controller. Plus they aren't any cheaper than 2.5" internal SSDs, so you might as well just slap one of them inside your computer and save that express card slot for something useful. Possibly store paperclips or toothpicks in it...

    And for years PCIe motherboards have been able to boot from PCIe storage controllers, but as mentioned, I only see that being useful if the Gamer or Workstation versions have reasonably small capacities. I really hope I don't run into too many morons that think they need that much high speed flash storage to play Farcry 2 or make a youtube mashup.

    Yes, as mentioned, random write is the all-important factor in these flash drives. If these PCIe deals are as high quality as they sound, they'll have a fair amount of DDR2 cache, and a battery unit, so you can safely cache writes. I'm not saying that is a perfect solution, but it could at least boost write speeds until the cache filled, and with a proper controller it could make for more efficient writes. A sequential read speed of 250MB/s is great and all, but not when you have to take a 6MB/s random write speed along with it. Which is the only reason I don't own a couple SATA SSDs by now...

  12. Pete
    Paris Hilton

    @Ashley P

    Thanks, you just made my day!

    Ergone Hosting!

    What next? Token-Cock-Ring Routers? [yeah i was born a while ago too.]

    P2P?

    Birthing could present a DoS situation though.

    tracert -J paris'shosting.biz

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    WHAT?!?

    These are NOT real PCIe SSD's like Fusion's they are 2.5" SSD's with a RAID controller all in a metal enclosure to look like it's a PCIe solution. It's a just an off the shelf RAID controller and two or three SSD's. It takes 50-100 SSD's like these to maintain the sustained real world throughput of a Fusion card. These might work for home users but will never compete in the enterprise.

    *is shocked that anyone is falling for this marketing ploy from Super Talent or OCZ*

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don't confuse PCI-X and PCIe slots, one is video/etc and one is for server boards.

    Hi, get your terminology right PCI-X is not a PCIe slot.

  15. Shung

    CLARIFICATION: Don't confuse PCI-X and PCIe......

    To be correct...

    "PCI-X (PCI eXtended) is a computer bus and expansion card standard that enhances the PCI Local Bus for higher bandwidth demanded by servers. It is a double-wide version of PCI, running at up to four times the clock speed, but is otherwise similar in electrical implementation and uses the same protocol. It has itself been replaced in modern designs by the similar-sounding PCI Express, which features a very different logical design, most notably being a "narrow but fast" serial connection instead of a "wide but slow" parallel connection." - Wikipedia

    As you can see from the description above, there is no such technical definition that separates the two by either video card or expansion card. Bottom-line, one is just an older standard for a PCI based system bus.

  16. Christopher Ahrens
    Gates Halo

    @PCIe ssd should be released in

    Yep, windows will do that, just copy all the System files to the SSD, change the disk number it points to in boot.ini (or easier BCDEdit) and off you go.

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