Hasta La Gadget!

There’s no doubt that Serial ATA storage is hitting a wall when even mainstream PCs like the MacBook Air and VAIO Pro use the PCI Express interface to get around performance bottlenecks. It’s a good thing that SATA-IO just ratified the improved SATA 3.2 specification, then. The new standard centers on SATA Express, which lets SATA storage ride on the PCIe bus and more than doubles the available bandwidth to 16Gbps (2GB/s). Version 3.2 also brings support for the M.2 format, giving Ultrabooks and tablets access to SATA Express in a tiny form factor. We’re already getting a peek at what the new spec can do when M.2-based PCIe drives offer comparable performance, but SATA 3.2’s ratification should bring that kind of speed to many more PCs in the future.

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Source: SATA-IO

Solid-state drives are so speedy these days that that even a SATA interface might not have the bandwidth to cope. It’s a good thing that Samsung has started mass-producing the first PCI Express-based SSDs for Ultrabooks, then. The new XP941 series uses PCIe’s wider data path to read at nearly 1.4GB/s — that’s 2.5 times faster than the quickest SATA SSDs, and nimble enough to move 500GB in six minutes. It also ships in a tinier M.2 format that makes past card-based SSDs look gargantuan, even when there’s up to 512GB of storage. Samsung hasn’t named laptop makers receiving the XP941, although it doesn’t take strong deductive skills to spot one of the (probable) first customers. When Apple is shipping a new 13-inch MacBook Air that just happens to use a very similar PCIe SSD from Samsung, there’s likely more than coincidence at work.

Filed under: Laptops, Storage, Apple, Samsung

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Source: Samsung

OCZ produced something of a surprise when its in-house Vector SSD stood well against more seasoned competition. It’s proud enough of that feat that it’s following up with demos of a PCI Express model for creative pros and others that may deal with exceptionally massive file transfers. The switch away from SATA isn’t just cosmetic, as PC Perspective saw: PCIe gives the Vector more bandwidth and raw actions per second, on top of boosting the peak storage and reducing lag. OCZ warns us that the demo unit is a prototype and doesn’t say when we might see a production model, though we’d venture that the usual PCIe storage price premium will be in effect.

Continue reading OCZ demos Vector SSD in even speedier PCI Express form for the pros

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Source: PC Perspective

“Taking one’s sweet time” just took on an entirely new meaning. Well over a year after Micron first introduced its RealSSD P320h PCI Express SSD, the aforesaid device is finally hitting the general availability stage. And with that, the flood of reviews begins. What sets this guy apart right out of the box is its native stature; much like Fusion-io (and very unlike most all other rivals from OCZ, Intel, LSI, etc.), this thing sidesteps the mishmash of SATA / SAS controllers and opts for a direct-attached PCIe approach. At around $7,000, it’s clearly aimed first at enterprise, but given Micron’s history in the consumer space, one could assume that this kind of wizardry will eventually trickle down. The fine folks over at HotHardware found their tester to be shockingly quick, easily outpacing its rivals when it came to read and write performance. Unfortunately, the Windows drivers provided weren’t exactly mature, which led to a few booting issues when swapping in varying motherboards. Of course, no one ever said the Ferrari of PCIe SSDs would purr without a bit of finagling. Hit up the links below for the full spiel.

Continue reading Micron’s RealSSD P320h PCI Express SSD gets reviewed: wildly fast, but a little unstable

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Micron’s RealSSD P320h PCI Express SSD gets reviewed: wildly fast, but a little unstable originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Oct 2012 15:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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