Flash memory maker OCZ has unveiled the Vertex 4 SATA III SSD as its fastest to date. The 2.5-inch drive reaches sequential speeds of up to 535MBps through an Indilinx Everest 2 controller that reportedly helps it outperform predecessors by a factor of four. It's also much more durable, with cycle erase specs that are outside of the measurable range, according to the creator.
OCZ has unveiled a SATA III controller that can be used to build solid-state drives with up to 1TB of storage capacity. Taking advantage of OCZ's buyout of Indilinx, the Everest SATA 3.0 SSD platform incorporates a 6Gbps host interface and a dual-core controlling processor. OCZ claimed that the architecture will enable a boot time 50 percent quicker than possible with existing SSDs.
OCZ Technology has announced that it is set to acquire Indilinx, a South Korea-based company that specializes in SSD controllers. Indilinx controllers have been present in some of OCZ's SSD lineup since late in 2008, including the Z-Drive series of PCIe-based drives. OCZ suggests the buyout will help the company expand its reach into the embedded, hybrid storage and industrial markets.
OCZ and storage chipset maker Indilinx in the past few days have unveiled a new firmware technique for solid-state drives that could avert the chronic slowdown in write speeds on these disks. As any storage cell on an SSD needs to be completely re-written if any amount of data exists, many SSDs collect "garbage" data which is just enough to force a rewrite and slow down the regular data recording process. The new approach automatically scrubs data from these cells and effectively restores an SSD to a near-new state if left alone for enough time.
Corsair on Thursday added a second line to its solid-state drives tailored to performance users. The Extreme series uses a fast controler from Indilinx and multi-level cell storage from Samsung to put its speed near the top of the field. Its reading speed crests at 240MB per second and is paired with a maximum write speed of 170MB per second.
