TRIM support for RAID set-ups on Intel ICH   Posted on 22/03/2010 at 09:31 by Benoit

	While most SSDs on the market now offer TRIM support, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the TRIM command is disactivated with flash drives in RAID. This means that performance levels for an SSD array declines over time, which is not what you want for an upgrade that’s supposed to increase your machine’s responsiveness! Intel announced TRIM support for RAID set-ups some time ago and this is now in effect! It has just published drivers for its RAID controllers that will allow support for the TRIM command. As long as your motherboard is equipped with an ICH 10 or ICH 11 and that all SSDs in an array are TRIM compatible, it should be possible to activate it. Intel does however specify that the command will not operate for RAID 5. You can download these drivers here.

LSI launches an SSD at 1500 MB/s   Posted on 19/03/2010 at 15:09 by Benoit - source: LSI

	LSI is a company specialised in enterprise network solutions and RAID, and has come together with Seagate to design pro SSDs. The first product from the partnership was announced today: the LSISSS6200. As it’s name doesn’t tell us, it’s a PCI-Express SSD, with capacities up to 300GB. Designed for companies, this drive has the SAS interface and gives record sequential speeds in the order of 1.5 GB/s reads and 1.2 GBs writes! Random 4KB reads reach 150,000 IOPS. To recap, an Intel Postville 160 GB, considered as one of the best general public cards manages just 8600 IOPS in the same conditions. These are very high performance levels then, comparable to what you get with an ioDrive with its Duo and which will no doubt be reflected in the price which has not yet been announced. Availability hasn’t yet been announed either but some OEMs are reported to already be in possession of the product.

Nec increases production of USB 3 chips   Posted on 18/03/2010 at 10:22 by Benoit

	The main motherboard manufacturers have all been offering USB 3 ports for some time. As chipsets don’t support this standard natively, an external controller is used. More often than not the NEC uPD720200. NEC say they have sold 3 million units of their controller, while they needed a year and a half to reach this figure for their USB 2 controller. The company has increased production capacities in order to be able to satisfy demand and reach a figure of two million chips produced monthly as of April 2010. As a fleet of properly equipped motherboards is a prerequisite for the increase in the compatible hardware offer, and vice versa, we can only salute this announcement.

OCZ Onyx: an SSD at €90!   Posted on 10/03/2010 at 16:28 by Benoit - source: TechConnect

	While SSDs are a very efficient upgrade option for your computer, they are generally still pretty expensive. Kingston, and therefore Intel, have tried to produce a more affordable model but their efforts have been insufficient. The 40GB Kingston V-Series was very rapidly abandonned, while its Intel X-25V model is on sale for around €110 in a good number of shops. Today, it’s over to OCZ to rise to the challenge. OCZ already has an entry-level SSD (the Agility) but it’s on sale at over €180. The new OCZ entry-level, the Onyx, is reported to be priced at just $99 and will probably be €90 in Europe. Note that it comes with a 3-year guarantee, which is impressive. To achieve such pricing, the Onyx’ capacity has been reduced to 32 GB and it uses an “Amigos” controller, that seems simply to be a cut down Indilinx Eco. Read speeds have been announced at 120 MB/s and writes at 70 MB/s, which is obviously down on what the competition is offering but superior to the 40 GB Kingstons and Intels, which don’t exceed 40 MB/s for sequential writes. TRIM is included as well as a 64 MB cache. Of course, the Onyx uses MLC Flash NAND – we’re not told where from. While we can only praise the efforts of manufacturers to democratise SSDs, it is a shame that the price cuts systematically result from reduction in capacities. Although 32 GB is enough for installing an operating systeme and a few applications, you’ll still need a standard hard drive for all your other programmes, which makes the SSD less worthwhile. A good compromise would be being able to store your system and all programmes on your SSD and only use the hard drive for data. This sort of solution comes at a cost however and these low capacity SSDs should be enough for those who want to speed up their system at reduced cost. The OCZ Onyx should be available in the next few months.

The SandForce SF-1200 widely adopted   Posted on 04/03/2010 at 14:29 by Marc

	Over the last few days several manufacturers have announced SSDs based on the SandForce SF-1200 SSD. In comparison with the SF-1500, it shares the following aspects of spec: - 260 MB/s for sequential reads and writes - 30 000 IOPS random reads on 4 KB blocks (120 MB/s) However in terms of random writes on 4 KB blocks we’re at 120 MB/s for the SF-1500 and 40 MB/s for the SF-1200. The difference then looks to be solely at a firmware level and in the possibility of coupling the SF-1500 with SLC, but SandForce also looks set to price this added value too high for the consumer market, reserving the SF-1500 for SSDs for the enterprise market. OCZ had already announced its intention to market a Vertex 2 based on the SF-1200 in March, as have A-Data with the S-599 range and PhotoFast with the G-Monster 2s. OCZ used CeBIT to announce the forthcoming arrival of the Agility 2, which is reported to be based on an SF-1200 with cut down performanace (while it’s already a cut down SF-1500!), while G-Skill has unveiled its Pheonix and Corsair its Forces. Generally, all manufacturers will be marketing versions at 50, 100, 200 and 400 GB, but it seems as if Corsair has limited itself to the best-selling 100 and 200 GB versions with its Force F100 and F200.