At Computex Taipei 2010, OCZ Technology has demonstrated the latest addition into its already broad solid-state drives lineup. The new product is intended for PCI Express bus and employs two SandForce controllers in RAID mode for absolutely maximum performance. Despite of rather unbelievable characteristics, OCZ calls the drive “affordable”, yet, does not reveal the actual price tag.

OCZ RevoDrive SSD with 120GB or 240GB capacity sports two SandForce SF-1200 controllers operating in RAID mode in order to boost performance of the storage device. Thanks to such solution, the PCI Express x4-based SSD designed for high-performance gaming PCs and workstations offers up to 540MB/s read, up to 530MB/s write speed and up to 75 000 IOPS

The manufacturer recommends to use this multi-level cell (MLC) flash-based solid-state drive as bootable device since it guarantees maximum performance possible. Unfortunately, due to usage of RAID mode, the SSD no longer supports Trim function and its intense usage as a primary storage device will inevitably lower its performance rather dramatically over time. Nonetheless, usage of RevoDrive only to boot an operating system seems to be a nice solution for environments where boot time is crucial.

The family of SSDs within OCZ’s product range has been growing rather rapidly in the last couple of years. But it remains to be seen whether such “special-purpose” drives like RevoDrive can become successful. At the end of the day, even MLC-based solid-state drives remain quite expensive and far not all performance-minded users would like to experiment by paying vast amounts of money. Nonetheless, the demand for SSDs is clearly growing, at Computex 2010 OCZ is focused on storage in much higher degree than its traditional memory and power supply businesses.

“Computex is always a good opportunity to showcase our latest solutions to both our clients and trade press and this year we have a complete range of solid state drive solutions that further push the envelope,” commented Ryan Petersen, chief executive officer of the OCZ Technology Group.

Tags: OCZ, SSD