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Super Talent's ridiculously-fast PCIe RAIDDrive starts shipping in October

by Parm Mann on 16 September 2009, 15:07

Tags: RAIDDrive ES, RAIDDrive WS, RAIDDrive GS, Super Talent

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Remember the ridiculously-fast RAIDDrive announced by Super Talent back on April 1st? Back then, we thought the drive might be just an April fool's joke, but apparently not, as it showed up again at Computex in June with Super Talent contemplating top-mounted eject buttons for each of the unit's four internal SSDs.

That extra functionality isn't happening, but Super Talent has announced today that it's going full steam ahead with its RAIDDrive products and they'll be shipping in early October. Here's the final design:

Need a reminder on what the RAIDDrive actually is? Put simply, it's a RAID configuration of multiple Super Talent SSDs, housed in a 258mm x 112mm x 25mm unit designed to interface with a system's PCIe x8 slot. The end result is capacities of up to 2TB, and seriously-blazing read and write speeds of up to 1.4GB/s and 1.2GB/s, respectively.

At launch, the RAIDDrive will be available in three unique flavours; the RAIDDrive ES, designed for Enterprise environments, the RAIDDrive WS, designed for workstation use, and the RAIDDrive GS, designed for gamers with money to burn. Here's how they stack up:

Product Family RAIDDrive ES RAIDDrive WS RAIDDrive GS
  Interface PCIE x8 PCIE x8 PCIE x8
  Form Factor PCIE PCIE PCIE
  Capacities 256MB - 1TB 256MB - 1TB 256MB - 2TB
  NAND Flash SLC SLC MLC
  Performance   Access Time 0.1ms 0.1ms 0.1ms
  Performance   Read/Write (MB/sec) 1,400/1,200 1,400/1,200 1,400/1,200
  RAID Function 0/5 0/5 0/5
  RAID Cache Size 512MB 512MB 512MB
  Supports RD Expander Yes Yes Yes
  Battery Backup Yes No No
  MTBF >1,500,000 hrs >1,500,000 hrs >1,500,000 hrs
  Dimensions (mm) 258 x 112 x 25 258 x 112 x 25 258 x 112 x 25

Wondering what the RD Expander is? According to Super Talent, that's a separate PCIe card for higher capacity models, allowing for two side-by-side RAIDDrives to hold a total of eight SSDs.

The speeds and capacities boggle the mind, but let's cut to the chase. We've been given no indication of pricing for smaller-capacity models, but OEM pricing for the 1TB RAIDDrive GS is $4,999. That's over £3,000. Any takers?



HEXUS Forums :: 8 Comments

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I dunno - the cheapest 256GB SSDs on scan are ~ £460, so £1840 just for the drives (assuming you're having 4 in RAID0). I'm sure there're enthusiasts out there who will buy this. Dunno about it being aimed at the gamer market though - how many gamers are going to sacrifice a PCIe slot for one of these rather than a second / third graphics card…? Maybe it's more suitable for people working with large datasets / graphics / video files…
that fan ruins the “SSDs are silent” argument.
I would presume the fan is for the RAID controller. and the fact the SSDs are in a very dense configuration, far more than a normal installation.
intresting to see how this stacks up against the likes of fusionIO, they all passively cooled too, which is a big plus for some blade installs
Who in there right mind will get this for gaming?? - Its aimed at high end server setups, etc imo.