OCZ Vertex 3 Pro SSD previews
In recent times, Sandforce's SF-1000 series controllers have ruled the roost in terms of performance, boasting a home in numerous SSDs from a number of manufacturers. Can their next-generation controllers mimic and improve on this notable success? A few sites have received early, pre-production professional level OCZ Vertex 3 Pro SSDs which are powered by a Sandforce SF-2500 part, potentially giving us an early feel for what they might have to offer.
Everything I've described up to this point applies to both the previous generation (SF-1200/1500) and the new generation (SF-2200/2500) of SandForce controllers. Now let's go over what's new:
1) Toggle Mode & ONFI 2 NAND support. Higher bandwidth NAND interfaces mean we should see much better performance without any architectural changes.
2) To accommodate the higher bandwidth NAND SandForce increased the size of on-chip memories and buffers as well as doubled the number of NAND die that can be active at one time. Finally there's native 6Gbps support to remove any interface bottlenecks. Both 1 & 2 will manifest as much higher read/write speed.
3) Better encryption. This is more of an enterprise feature but the SF-2000 controllers support AES-256 encryption across the drive (and double encryption to support different encryption keys for separate address ranges on the drive).
4) Better ECC. NAND densities and defect rates are going up, program/erase cycles are going down. The SF-2000 as a result has an improved ECC engine.
Anandtech1) Toggle Mode & ONFI 2 NAND support. Higher bandwidth NAND interfaces mean we should see much better performance without any architectural changes.
2) To accommodate the higher bandwidth NAND SandForce increased the size of on-chip memories and buffers as well as doubled the number of NAND die that can be active at one time. Finally there's native 6Gbps support to remove any interface bottlenecks. Both 1 & 2 will manifest as much higher read/write speed.
3) Better encryption. This is more of an enterprise feature but the SF-2000 controllers support AES-256 encryption across the drive (and double encryption to support different encryption keys for separate address ranges on the drive).
4) Better ECC. NAND densities and defect rates are going up, program/erase cycles are going down. The SF-2000 as a result has an improved ECC engine.
At the heart of the upcoming Vertex 3 Pro SSD is a brand new controller from SandForce, the SF-2582. The SF-2582 is a member of the upcoming SandForce SF-2000 family of SSD processors, which was announced a few months back. The new SF-2000 SSD processor family builds upon the success of the current SF-1500 / SF-1200 series by adding 6Gb/s SATA III interface support, integrating a more powerful encryption engine, and adding support for new flash memory types. While new, the SF-2000 family does, however, leverage technologies from the previous generation. As such, we'd recommend checking out some of our previous SandForce coverage for some back-story on SandForce and what makes their SSD controllers so sought after. In our look at the OCZ Vertex Limited Edition, we go into detail on DuraWrite and RAISE and some of SandForce's other proprietary technologies. We highly recommend checking that story out.
Hot HardwareAs a professional level product, as well as by offering the best performance we have seen from any SSD to date, the Vertex 3 Pro costs a premium. Below are the prices set forth by OCZ in the included documentation, though they are cautious enough to warn of potential pricing changes before full product availability.
- 100G @ $525 ($5.25 / GB)
- 200G @ $775 ($3.87 / GB)
- 400G @ $1350 ($3.37 / GB)
PC Perspective- 100G @ $525 ($5.25 / GB)
- 200G @ $775 ($3.87 / GB)
- 400G @ $1350 ($3.37 / GB)
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AMD talks GPU gaming physics
It's amazing that we're still having to talk about GPU physics and who should support what in 2011 after it's been such a hot topic for years, but such discussions show no sign of ending for now. Along those lines, AMD's Manju Hegde (formerly of AGEIA) shares his current views on the GPU physics ecosystem.
In terms of gaming physics, the OpenCL offering Hegde talks about concerns a new project using Bullet Physics, and this is a strategy that AMD appears to be taking very seriously if you look at the guys AMD's hiring to join its physics team. 'We have Erwin Coumans as part of our team,' notes Hegde, 'who used to be at Sony and he's the guy who's brought the Bullet Physics engine to the industry, which is also used in cinematic effects.
'Also, we now have Takahiro Harada at AMD - he used to be a professor in Japan and then joined Havok and he's been here for two months. As you can see, we do have a physics strategy, which is built on this core team, and we're augmenting this with additional people too.'
bit-tech has the discussion in full.'Also, we now have Takahiro Harada at AMD - he used to be a professor in Japan and then joined Havok and he's been here for two months. As you can see, we do have a physics strategy, which is built on this core team, and we're augmenting this with additional people too.'
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