Next-Gen SandForce Controller Seen on OCZ SSD

OCZ's Vertex 3 Pro, seen at CES 2011, was shown to have sustained read speeds of 550 MB/s and sustained write speeds of 525 MB/s. Kapow!!

Last week during CES 2011, The Tech Report spotted OCZ's Vertex 3 Pro SSD--running in a demo system--using a next-generation SandForce SF-2582 controller and a 6Gbps Serial ATA interface. OCZ demonstrated its read and write speeds by running the ATTO Disk Benchmark which clearly showed the disk hitting sustained read speeds of 550 MB/s and sustained write speeds of 525 MB/s.

The company said that the final version of the Vetrex 3 Pro will use different flash memory chips than what was used in the demo unit, however it was unclear if the change would impact the current performance.

OCZ also demonstrated its latest Z-Drive (R3) sporting a PCI-Express Gen 2 x8 connection linked to four SandForce-based SSDs. The site was unable to obtain actual specifics surrounding the RAID chip combining the four SSDs into a single striped array, however OCZ said that the flash controller was of the current generation rather than what's used on the Vertex 3 Pro.

As for specs, the Z-Drive R3 will offer 1,000 MB/s sustained reads, 950 MB/s sustained writes, and up to 135,000 random-write IOPS. Additionally, the R3 was built on a half-height card, making it easy to insert the PCIe-based SSD in a low-profile server chassis. Capacity options will reportedly include up to 1.2 TB of MLC flash and up to 600 GB of SLC memory.

The Vertex 3 Pro is expected to ship the next few months. A release date for the Z-Drive R3 wasn't specified.