RAID card delivers impressive speeds up to 56 GB/s — throughput possible with four PCIe 5.0 SSDs or eight PCIe 4.0 SSDs

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At the cutting edge of current-gen hardware RAID 0 cards

HighPoint's premiere NVMe Gen 5 RAID controller, the Rocket 1608A.
HighPoint's premiere NVMe Gen 5 RAID controller, the Rocket 1608A, which supports 4 NVMe Gen 5 drives or 8 NVMe Gen 4 drives. (Image credit: HighPoint)

Those searching for higher performance than the best SSDs can offer may be interested in hearing about HighPoint unveiling the brand's latest RAID controller card, the HighPoint Rocket 1608A. The HighPoint Rocket 1608A is a hardware RAID card that leverages eight PCIe 5.0 / PCIe 4.0 x4 slots (only four full-speed drives can be used at a time if Gen 5), all controlled by a Broadcom PEX89048 chip to drive up to 56 GB/s throughput.

According to Broadcom, the PEX89048 chip is a "48-lane, 48-port, PCI Express Gen 5.0 ExpressFabric Platform." ExpressFabric refers to the technology used to allow for rapid PCIe switching between otherwise standard NVMe drives, making speeds like this possible in a RAID 0 configuration. It is how you're achieving NVMe speeds faster than individual drives with the help of this RAID controller card.

HighPoint's NVME switching technology is currently achieving roughly 56 GB/s of PCIe Gen 5's theoretical maximum of 64 GB/s. According to their official Switching Technology page, this is because PCIe Gen 5 devices are "more sensitive to signal degradation," which is worsened by limited PCIe lanes and the best signal/stability being reserved for GPUs.

Further claims on HighPoint's page point toward their technology and the onboard Broadcom ExpressFabric chip, which is used to maintain signal integrity and low latency across all drives installed within these hardware RAID arrays.

Overall, this latest HighPoint offering does seem like it may be interesting— though it isn't that much better than its prior best 55 GB/s showing in 2022. Solutions like GraidTech's SupremeRAID cards— "GPU RAID"— may achieve even faster speeds of up to 80 GB/s. It's worth noting that most of these hardware RAID solutions— especially SupremeRAID— seem to be focused on improving RAID array speed and throughput, with minimal, if any, focus on enhancing RAID stability or redundancy.

It's still impressive that there are solutions capable of taking the modern-day blazing-fast SSDs and making them even faster, though. Our current top PCIe 5.0 drive, the Crucial T705 2TB, tops out at 14.5 GB/s in read speeds for your reference against  HighPoint's 56 GB/s showing and SupremeRAID's 80 GB/s.

Christopher Harper
Freelance News Writer
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11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • USAFRet
    Pre-emptive answer - No, this will not make your games run faster.
    Reply
  • newtechldtech
    USAFRet said:
    Pre-emptive answer - No, this will not make your games run faster.
    "load/install" faster.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    newtechldtech said:
    "load/install" faster.
    haha...no.
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    Only make your game hot as possible...
    40w (from ssd) of storage power or more.
    Reply
  • LabRat 891
    Wish there was more focus on the PCIswitch.
    https://www.broadcom.com/products/pcie-switches-retimers/expressfabric/gen5/pex89048Esp. today with SoCs, PCIe switches function as a "slottable south bridge".

    The fact that the 'most notice' comes from NVME expanders, is kinda sad...
    Reply
  • Li Ken-un
    Amdlova said:
    40w (from ssd) of storage power or more.
    I have the PCIe 4.0 switch, and it has a heat sink but no fan. The documentation gave an upper safe operating temperature range of 0°C to 55°C. The freaking thing was hitting over 80°C just idling. Mind you, that heat was generated by the switch alone. The wires were connected to an SSD enclosure two feet away, and there was only one idle SSD in it. I bought three 120 mm fans to blow air directly over the switch and that brought temperatures back down to 49°C.

    I don’t know if stuffing 8 SSDs in the M.2 AIC is a good idea given that there’s the heat from the switch and also the 8 SSDs which suck up to 11 W of power. That tiny little fan isn’t going to cut it if you want to extract 56 GB/s performance from the AIC.

    That said, I do plan on getting the switch with the MCIO connectors. I already have the SSD enclosures and have been planning a long time for something like it. This switch enables connecting 32 × PCIe 3.0 SSDs operating over a single lane each. At low queue depths, a fleet of Optanes could saturate the bus with random I/O.
    Reply
  • Notton
    "
    HighPoint PCIe Gen5 & 2nd Gen PCIe Gen4 NVMe product LinesNVMe Switch Series (Shipping Q3, 2024)
    Rocket 1628A – PCIe Gen5 x16 to 4-MCIOx8 NVMe Switch Adapter
    Rocket 1608A – PCIe Gen5 x16 to 8-M.2x4 NVMe Switch AIC
    Rocket 1528D – PCIe Gen4 x16 to 4-SlimSASx8 NVMe Switch Adapter
    NVMe RAID Series (Shipping Q3, 2024)
    Rocket 7628A – PCIe Gen5 x16 to 4-MCIOx8 NVMe RAID Adapter
    Rocket 7608A – PCIe Gen5 x16 to 8-M.2x4 NVMe RAID AIC
    Rocket 7528D – PCIe Gen4 x16 to 4-SlimSASx8 NVMe RAID Adapter"

    The highpoint press release doesn't say anything about RAID functionality with the Switch series.
    In fact, they go on to offer a RAID series.

    I get the impression the 1608A does not support hardware level RAID, yet the TH article says it does? or did I read it wrong?

    Beyond that, I'm curious as to who would use the Switch series, unless they are very cheap compared to the RAID series.
    PCIe switches are ridiculously expensive as is, so how much of a premium would the RAID series have?
    Reply
  • jp7189
    USAFRet said:
    Pre-emptive answer - No, this will not make your games run faster.

    We're enthusiasts; we find ways to push limits. I have games that are heavily modded - as much as 300GB of mods. When loading up such a game there's ~30 seconds delay of heavy disk activity while the engine paws through all the mods. That can be annoying while working on said mods - tweak a setting, reload the game, stare at a black screen, check the result, rinse and repeat.

    Is that annoyance worth the cost of this thing? Dunno. I just bought an 8TB gen 4 for ~$800; 4x 2TB would have been much cheaper + whatever the cost of this card.

    Anyway, point being, there are times when something like this makes sense.
    Reply
  • Li Ken-un
    Shipping Q3, 2024
    To add relevant detail to this, I quote from HighPoint’s press release:
    Shipping & AvailabilityHighPoint’s PCIe Gen5 NVMe AICs will begin shipping in early May 2024, and will be available worldwide, direct from our E-Store and our Authorized Global Resale and Distribution partners.
    “Q3” doesn’t mean anything useful to the average reader as that could be any month from July through September.

    Notton said:
    how much of a premium would the RAID series have?
    The difference is $500.00. Non-RAID goes for $1,499.00. RAID goes for $1,999.00.

    Those wanting low latency would probably opt for the switch instead of RAID. There are plenty of file systems that’ll take care of integrity and redundancy. And in my opinion, that is where it belongs.
    Reply
  • tschetter
    but it's still made in china. that's becoming more and more dubious to install chinese parts to run critical intellectual property
    Reply