Solid state storage has somewhat stagnated as controllers bumped against SATA 2 speeds; but an update to SATA 3 is promising a change.
Storage is only as fast as the controller that manages it, and solid-state storage quickly tore through the 3Gbps speed limit imposed on it by the SATA 2.0 standard, bringing about a need for a faster bus.
SATA 3.0 is that faster bus, and while it doesn't quite offer much of a performance improvement for traditional rotating media, products such as OCZ's Vertex 2 would certainly benefit from increased headroom.
Sandforce has been working on a new controller for SATA 3 for quite some time now, and a recent press release details their latest design, the SF-2000, which promises a huge step-up from the current SF-1500 controller family.
These chips feature a 6 Gigabit-per-second SATA host interface, industry applauded DuraClass™ Technology, an unprecedented 60,000 sustained random read/write IOPS (Input-output Operations Per Second) and sustained sequential read/write performance of 500 Megabytes per second. In addition to state-of-the-art performance, reliability, security, and Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) connectivity enhancements, the SF-2000 family supports single-level, multi-level, and enterprise multi-level cell (SLC, MLC, & eMLC) NAND Flash families from all major suppliers with its high-speed ONFi2 and Toggle Flash interface.
This signifies a huge performance increase compared to SATA 2.0, a quite literal doubling of theoretical throughput, and for many enthusiasts biding their time for the leap to solid state this technology would certainly be the one to invest in.
The SF-2000 controller will be demonstrated at Storage Networking World over the next few days, but it's certain that the SATA 3.0 standard will make things faster - for SSD drives and PCIe SSDs for both consumers and enterprise.
Though not mentioned in the press release we would expect to see SF-2000 products launching in early 2011.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012