Indilinx's Everest Controller Does 6 Gb/s
The newest Indilinx controller is said to be a major upgrade from the low-end Barefoot controller used in OCZ's more budget-oriented SSDs. Dubbed Everest, this new piece of logic comes in SATA 3Gb/s and SATA 6Gb/s flavors. OCZ's product portfolios already outline the capabilities of both (the higher-performance model is called Octane, while the slower drive is dubbed Octane S2). Naturally, the drive on our test bench today is the flagship, which best represents what the controller hardware can do.
Like most SSD companies, OCZ protects a number of its product's more technical details by withholding the innermost workings. We do know, however, that Everest is yet another eight-channel controller based on a dual-core ARM architecture.
Unlike the SandForce-based drives it competes with in OCZ's line-up, Everest employs a discrete data cache, which is specified at 512 MB on our 512 GB Octane review sample (and, in fact, all of the available capacity points).
| Specifications | 480 GB Vertex 3 | 512 GB Octane |
|---|---|---|
| NAND | IMFT 25 nm MLC, ONFi 2.2 | IMFT 25 nm MLC, ONFi 2.2 |
| Cache | - | 512 MB DDR3-1600 DRAM |
| Sequential Read | 530 MB/s | 535 MB/s |
| Sequential Write | 450 MB/s | 400 MB/s |
| 4 KB Random Read | 85 000 IOPS | 37 000 IOPS |
| 4 KB Random Write | 60 000 IOPS | 16 000 IOPS |
OCZ's Octane uses the same synchronous ONFi 2.2-compatible NAND as the company's flagship Vertex 3. Even still, the company puts the Octane's performance one step below the Vertex 3, charging a little bit less per gigabyte in exchange for lower performance.
The trade-off makes sense when you consider the cited specifications. The Octane's sequential read performance is the same as Vertex 3, while its writes are 50 MB/s slower. Random performance is really where the Octane falls behind more noticeably. The 512 MB Vertex 3 is claimed to hit 85 000 random read IOPS and 60 000 random write IOPS. In comparison, the Octane hits the scene with up to 37 000 random read IOPS and 16 000 random write IOPS.
