As discussed in early January, OCZ Technology revealed its second generation Indilinx Everest 2 controller at CES 2012. At CeBIT 2012, we get to see the Indilinx Everest 2 controller in action with the new Vertex 4. The Vertex series has been OCZ Technology's performance-based SSD and, based on list specifications, the trend continues with the Vertex 4. The Vertex 4 utilizes a 2.5-inch form factor SATA 6.0 Gb/s interface with Synchronous MLC NAND Flash memory. According to OCZ, the Vertex 4 is expected to have transfer speeds of up to 550 MB/s and up to 90,000 IOPS 4k random reads.
During CeBIT, OCZ demonstrated the performance Vertex 4 which showed sequential read/write speeds of 366.94 MB/s and 305.26 MB/s and up to 80,000 IOPS for 4k random reads. This is lower than the listed specifications for the drive but a quick look at AS SSD Benchmark's screen shot shows it is running in IDE mode and it is unclear on what SATA controller, as well (Intel, Marvell... etc.). I would expect the final consumer released version to match or be closer to the specified specifications.
With Vertex 4 switching to the Indilinx Everest 2 controller, it shows OCZ Technology is making the final switch from a SandForce controller to its own controller for its consumer based SSDs. There is no information on the expected release date but we are looking forward to getting our hands on the new Vertex 4 and putting it through our benchmarks.
