On August 2, OCZ released its fifthgeneration of PCI-Express solid state drive (SSD), which is known tohave a high performance read rate of 2.8GB/sec. The brand newZ-series SSD R4 is known for doubling the performance of theprevious generation SSD, according to Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ.

The older generation Z-Drives ofOCZ’s had a capacity of 2TB and throughput of 1.4 Gbit/sec. The newdrives come in the capacity range of 300GB to 1.2TB for a half-heightcard and 800GB to 3.2TB for a full-height card. Interestingly,the new hardware is targeted for server manufacturers as opposed tothe contemporary approach of selling the OCZ drives to the end users.

According to Petersen, a major systemsmanufacturer expects to sell a card having 4 OCZ PCIe controllers,which are capable of generating over 400,000 4K random input-outputoperations/second (IOPS).

The new generation OCZ SSD driveutilizes Micron's NAND flash with 25 nanometer circuitry. Micron hasalso been developing PCIe-based SSDs for businesses as well. TheMicron P320h line, which was advertised in June this year, has a highperformance level of 3GB/sec. This Micron card utilizes high-endsingle-level cell (SLC) NAND flash. The SSD card of OCZ uses thecheaper multi-level cell (MLC) flash, and therefore offers itsproduct at $7/gigabyte.

The other opponents like Fusion-io havecome up with a MLC-based PCIe card named ioDrive. Fusion-io'sfull-height, midrange PCIe SSD called ioDrive Duo offers a throughputof 1.5GB/sec having a capacity of 320GB to 1.2TB. According to the CEO of OCZ, a single Zseries controller can generate up to 500,000 4KB random IOPS. Alongwith it, each flash card can host to a maximum of two controllers. Hequoted, “So that's one million IOPS per card with two controllers.”

The “SuperScale” OCZ's PCIecontroller manages functions like Complex Command Queuing Structure(CCQS) and a queue balancing algorithm which increases Input/Outputperformance. The newest Z-series SSD is mainly targeted for privateand public cloud infrastructures. Petersen added, “We're enablingcloud computing guys to meet their storage needs by solving theproblems of big data.”

The PDIe SSD’s are available in theform of adapter cards and do not possess a 3.5 inch or even 2.5 inchhard disk drive form factor. For commercial purposes, the PCIe cardis the best.