OCZ Technology Launches Next Generation Indilinx Everest SSD Controller Platform

New Indilinx Everest 2 Platform Delivers Industry's Highest IOPS Performance for SATA-Based Drives and Radically Extends NAND Flash Life

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SAN JOSE, Calif., April 4, 2012 – OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today introduced Indilinx Everest 2, its next-generation SSD platform that delivers an industry-best performance of 120,000 random input/output operations per second (IOPS) for SATA-based drives. In addition to this unprecedented transactional performance, the Everest 2 features the most advanced flash management capabilities which can significantly extend NAND flash life and enhance SSD reliability. This innovative controller platform will debut in OCZ’s new Vertex 4 SSD product line.

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The Indilinx Everest 2 family of solid state drive processors establishes a new computing and storage paradigm by delivering breakthrough performance and uncompromising reliability to next-generation SSDs. Combining a 400MHz dual-core CPU, 6Gbps SATA Revision 3.0 interface, and support for the latest, most advanced NAND flash memory technology available, Everest 2 exceeds the needs of the most demanding SSD environments.

Everest 2 features a highly optimized system architecture, showcasing the potential of tight integration between hardware and firmware. By combining a highly parallel and pipelined hardware design with extremely efficient data management algorithms, Everest 2 achieves unsurpassed speeds under any workload, regardless of data type and I/O pattern. This results in near-zero data access latency and best-in-class transactional performance of any SATA processor available today. Everest 2-powered SSDs enable a superior user experience from instantaneous system booting and application loading to exceptional SSD responsiveness in even the most demanding and compute-intensive applications.

Everest 2 also unveils Ndurance™ 2.0, the most advanced suite of NAND flash management technology ever developed for SATA SSDs. Designed exclusively for Indilinx SSD processors, Ndurance 2.0 overcomes critical NAND flash memory shortcomings to ensure that SSDs with consumer-grade NAND flash can be reliably used in both enterprise and client computing environments over a lifetime well beyond the manufacturer-rated endurance limits.

“Our Indilinx Everest 2 platform with Ndurance 2.0 is truly in a class by itself. It convincingly outperforms all competing solutions while providing unparalleled reliability and exceptional value through its life-extending NAND flash management capabilities,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. “This revolutionary architecture will be integral in our own storage developments going forward, and offers storage solution manufacturers with unprecedented performance, endurance and cost flexibility to optimize their designs.”

The new Indilinx Everest 2 SSD controller platform includes a complete spectrum of enhanced capabilities such as:

Performance Optimization

The Everest 2 SSD controller architecture features sequential bandwidth of up to 535 MB/s, maximum random I/O performance of up to 120,000 IOPS, 4K random read performance of up to 95,000 IOPS, and random write performance of up to 85,000 IOPS. In comparison to OCZ’s previous Everest SSD controller generation, the transactional performance is doubled under typical use case scenarios such as managing and creating commonplace data such as MP3s, JPEGs, videos and digital camera RAW files.

In addition to this industry-leading transactional performance, the Everest 2 SSD controller reduces latency to 0.043ms for read operations and 0.026ms for write operations, yielding an improvement of approximately 80 percent over the previous Everest SSD controller generation. This latency reduction accelerates access to data, and hence, application system performance.

Extending NAND Flash Life

Extending the life of NAND flash memory for MLC-based SSD requires a highly intelligent controller that can analyze and dynamically adapt to increasing NAND vulnerabilities as the flash cells wear or process geometries get smaller. The Everest 2 controller, featuring Indilinx Ndurance 2.0 technology, is designed to radically extend NAND flash memory life while providing enterprise-class endurance even when commodity-grade NAND flash is used. Ndurance 2.0 technology suite includes the following capabilities:

  • Advanced Multi-Level ECC:

    “The advanced, multi-level BCH ECC engine with progressive error correction adapts to the specific error characteristics of different NAND devices. The programmable ECC engine achieves an effective correction power of up to 128 bits per 1KB of data while significantly reducing the uncorrectable bit error rate (UBER).”

  • Adaptive Program and Read Algorithms:

    “Proprietary and vendor-specific program and read algorithms are applied, ranging from internal voltage shifting to sophisticated signal processing techniques that minimize NAND flash deterioration, reduce disturbances that affect adjacent flash cells, and improve data recovery.”

  • Redundant NAND Array™ (RNA) Technology:

    “This option safeguards against catastrophic NAND flash failures and uncorrectable data errors by generating parity data information and striping it across multiple NAND flash cells. RNA provides RAID-like protection that enables data to be divided and replicated amongst multiple NAND flash devices within an OCZ SSD.”

  • Reduced Write Amplification without Compression:

    “Lower write amplification is achieved by concatenating multiple write requests from the host while minimizing wasteful copy back operations of unaffected data sectors. This approach virtually eliminates excessive programming and read operations while preserving precious program/erase cycles without the need for performance-degrading data compression.”

Advanced Feature Set

The Everest 2 controller technologically surpasses all other SSD controllers in the industry through an advanced feature set that includes:

  • Broadest NAND flash support, including 1xnm and TLC
  • Up to 8 NAND flash channels with up to 16-way interleaving per channel
  • Up to 535 MB/s transfer rates when using synchronous flash
  • HyperQueueing™ and Native Command Queuing (NCQ), with a queue depth up to 32 commands, and algorithms to optimize the order in which read and write operations are executed
  • Up to 8Gb (1GB) of 800MHz DDR2/DDR3 DRAM cache support
  • Multi-Level ECC with 128-bit correction capability per 1KB of data
  • RNA Redundant NAND Array to protect against catastrophic NAND flash failure
  • True end-to-end data path protection performs data integrity checks at every juncture where data is transmitted, received, processed and stored to ensure that corrupted data will be detected and not propagated
  • Power fail protection and optional Supercap support prevents data loss in the event of a power failure
  • Auto encryption and AES-256 encryption to protect and secure data
  • Additional flash management techniques such as TRIM, background garbage collection, dynamic and static wear-leveling and advanced flash defect management

The Everest 2 SSD controller platform will be implemented in future OCZ storage solutions with the first being the OCZ Vertex 4 SSD. The Vertex 4 SSD will be available through OCZ’s global channel in a wide range of capacities and is ideally suited for demanding computing and workstation environments.