OCZ & Marvell Design Native PCIe SSD Controller, to Debut in Z-Drive R5

A couple of months after finalizing the design of its first in-house developed SATA SSD processor, OCZ is now announcing a new SSD controller co-developed together with Marvell that ditches the SATA interface entirely and features native PCI Express support.

Based on the Marvell 88NV9145, the new SSD processor is code named Kilimanjaro, and the first product to use it will be the OCZ Z-Drive R5.

The Marvell controller used for this PCI Express SSD features a modular construction, according to Storage Review, and each one of these modules feeds into a primary controller, similar to the one used in the OCZ Z-Drive R4, but through a native PCIe interface.

This design has the advantage of not requiring an onboard SATA RAID chip for connecting the SSDs together, thus removing a potential bottleneck from the equation.

In addition to the native PCIe interface, the controller also uses OCZ's Virtualized Controller Architecture 3.0 (VCA 3.0) and can deliver up to 12TB of high-performance storage.

"We are continually pushing the envelope to deliver innovative PCIe SSDs to address challenges that our clients face when processing and managing ever growing amounts of complex data sets," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology.

"The Z-Drive R5, leverages the powerful Kilimanjaro platform to deliver superior performance, greater capacity, and an enhanced hardware and software feature-set that is unmatched in the industry.

“This best-of-breed next generation native solution enables clients to eliminate I/O bottlenecks for even the most data intensive server and enterprise storage applications," concluded the company’s rep.

The Z-Drive R5 will debut at Storage Visions 2012 and will also be showcased at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, which will open its gates in just of couple of days from now.