Introduction and Packaging

Today we take a look at OCZ’s newest offering in next generation Solid State Storage technology, coupled with a completely new take on storage interface technology. When USB3.0 and even SATA 6Gb/sec are not fast enough, just invent something new!
Introduction:

OCZ has been cooking up some goodies in their kitchen for the past few months. While the norm for them is a new drive every few months, with the occasional new controller thrown in, this time they are pushing some entirely new tech:

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The High Speed Data Link (HSDL) is OCZ’s crack at increased storage transfer rates within the PC chassis.

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SATA and SAS are the more common storage interfaces at present.
HSDL promises to push the data transfer rates further and faster than the older tech.

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Here we see the interface cable. Those familiar with high end SAS RAID cards may find it familiar – it’s the same type of ‘mini-SAS’ connector. OCZ opted to go with the physical standard, but changed the electricals around considerably. Whatever you do, don’t plug an HSDL device into a SAS RAID card (or vice versa)!

SFF-8087 cables (mini-SAS) contain four Low Voltage Differential data pairs, meaning four channels of data per cable. Where they usually carry SAS or SATA data streams, OCZ had a different purpose in mind – PCIe signals.
 
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Above we can get an idea of where all of this is going. We take a standard PCIe adapter card with a simple buffer chip, and effectively extend four channels of the PCIe bus. This extension passes via the HSDL cable to the device – in this case the OCZ Ibis we are looking at today. Previous RAID enabled SSD’s had to pass through RAID chips via SATA, while the Ibis is able to contain a bona-fide PCIe RAID solution. This is significant as solutions for the former always hit a brick wall on ultimate IOPS performance, as they do not support passing on Comamnd Queueing – vital to high IO’s in a RAID configuration. Another point of interest is that the above configuration is the simplest possible with HSDL, as it’s meant to scale much further:

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A larger HSDL interface gangs together four Ibis units via a single card, theoretically quadrupling the available bandwidth.

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An even more advanced (presumably next generation) Ibis could accept four ports directly, giving it a full PCIe 16x link.

So, what does all of this look like in reality? Behold:
 
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One 240GB OCZ Ibis prototype. How long can this stay assembled you ask???


 

  
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