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?
