OCZ Octane MLC drives set to shake up SSD market

OCZ have been at the forefront of the Solid State sector now for a very long time, and the news of their upcoming Octane drives is set to shake up the SSD market.

We managed to speak with an insider over the weekend and the new units will use 2Xnm MLC NAND flash. The new drives will be based around the Indilinx Everest platform – and we also managed to score some pictures.

From the conversations we have had, the Octane SATA 6Gbps will be based around 2Xnm SYNC MLC flash memory. Sizes have yet to be confirmed but we have heard that they will be releasing 512GB and 1TB sizes for higher storage demands. 128GB and 256GB will hit the mainstream audience.

OCZ are also releasing the Octane-S2 drives which will be 3Gbps rated with ASYNC memory. We hear sizes for this will be closely matched to the faster units, right up to 1TB.

The new Indilinx controller has new proprietary nDurance technology which is said to improve NAND life by more than twice the current standard, leading to much more durable units. They should also boot faster than current drives thanks to new algorithms which enhance boot data access speeds. Obviously we haven't tested this so we can't confirm. OCZ claim up to 50% faster which is a heck of an improvement, if its true.

Pricing has yet to be confirmed although knowing OCZ we expect them to be extremely competitive. We have heard from a source this morning that the 128GB drive should be around £140, which means they will offer a new level of price to performance.

We are also hearing that they have a new sustained performance algorithm in place which maintains a close to ‘fresh out of the box' experience. They are optimised for all file types and sizes.

• Indilinx nDurance increases NAND life up to 2X of the rated P/E cycles (current generation NAND ≈ 3K-5K)
  Result: Longer product life
• Industry’s lowest latency as low as 0.06ms
  Result: Snappier real world performance; faster access to files and applications
• Feature Indilinx “fast boot” technology
  Result: Decreases system boot time by up to 50% over existing SSDs
• No data compression-related limitations; this is in contrast to competing offerings
  Result: Faster performance with compressed data (MP3, JPG, RAW, PSD, OS X software, etc.)
• Performance is steady over time due to proprietary algorithms performance
  Result: Exceptional long-term performance even when drive becomes “dirty”
• Focuses on the best overall performance instead of just focusing on high 4k performance only
  Result: Performance between 4k and 8k files is similar (SQL and Win 7 optimization)
• Strong performance at low queue depths (QD 1 – 3); increased significantly over competing SSDs
  Result: Great performance even when not under heavy multitasking/workloads

Kitguru says: Hang fire on a new SSD purchase, we are waiting for these patiently!

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