OCZ Teases Faster SSD Controller, Remains Mum on Rumors

[Guest]

OCZ is making a lot of waves these days. In its CQ2 conference call, the company confirmed that its Barefoot controller should be returning in sample form from the contract fab shortly.

OCZ Teases Faster SSD Controller, Remains Mum on Rumors : Read more

 

[apache_lives]

OCZ instead of making a faster SSD, hows about making one that is reliable and works FIRST go not requiring 10+ firmware updates to "fix" i expect things to work out of the box its a joke.

 

[RazorBurn]

If ever Seagate acquires OCZ, and brings its Great Realibility for their SSD.. All my future SSD purchases will go with it..

 

[unksol]

"OCZ teases new SSD controller release, higher speeds by 2013: reliable firmware anticipated by 2015"

an SSD specific risk instruction set, allowing most instructions and branches to be executed in a single cycle

Normally I'd expect it to be a RISC instruction set, but with OCZ I'm willing to believe it's a "risk" instruction set. makes sense with them, and after all it's a quote from the CEO

 

[thuan]

#Correction:
an SSD specific RISC instruction set

Still even with that correction what the CEO talked is more about PR than actual technology. There's no SSD specific instruction set. there's only instruction set optimized for SSD.

 

[jaquith]

I've seen enough 'storage' mergers for my comfort level, and I see no upside as a consumer. My concern is another opportunity for increasing the prices.

Samsung currently is the only company that manufactures both its Controllers & NAND. So it makes me wonder what acquisition Seagate is targeting now for NAND manufacturing.

 

[kaisellgren]

[citation][nom]apache_lives[/nom]OCZ instead of making a faster SSD, hows about making one that is reliable and works FIRST go not requiring 10+ firmware updates to "fix" i expect things to work out of the box its a joke.[/citation]
Well if they could come up with a way to automatically apply firmware updates (although I do not know how it would happen exactly), then I see now problems in this regard. I kind of wish BIOS and firmware updates were automatically applied.

 

[unksol]

Well if they could come up with a way to automatically apply firmware updates (although I do not know how it would happen exactly), then I see now problems in this regard. I kind of wish BIOS and firmware updates were automatically applied.

You mean you want OCZ automatically applying automatic destruction firmware flashes and destroying your Data with no warning? Or.bricking your SSD?

Why not just use.a good controller, good firmware, and release a good SSD? you know. Like Samsung

 

[shin0bi272]

[citation][nom]jaquith[/nom]I've seen enough 'storage' mergers for my comfort level, and I see no upside as a consumer. My concern is another opportunity for increasing the prices.Samsung currently is the only company that manufactures both its Controllers & NAND. So it makes me wonder what acquisition Seagate is targeting now for NAND manufacturing.[/citation]
in the late 1800's and early 1900's Carnegie's U.S. Steel held 96% of all steel manufacturing in the US (and the US had almost 40% of the worlds steel production). He was able to bring the price of steel down from over 200 dollars a ton to 14. So the fears everyone has of monopolies are not always grounded in reality but progressive politician propaganda.

 

[memadmax]

[citation][nom]kaisellgren[/nom]Well if they could come up with a way to automatically apply firmware updates (although I do not know how it would happen exactly), then I see now problems in this regard. I kind of wish BIOS and firmware updates were automatically applied.[/citation]

That leaves so many security holes open, and more crap will be needed to patch those security holes...
No thanks.

 

[memadmax]

[citation][nom]shin0bi272[/nom]in the late 1800's and early 1900's Carnegie's U.S. Steel held 96% of all steel manufacturing in the US (and the US had almost 40% of the worlds steel production). He was able to bring the price of steel down from over 200 dollars a ton to 14. So the fears everyone has of monopolies are not always grounded in reality but progressive politician propaganda.[/citation]

Thats more true than you realize. Now a days, any time some government "regulation" comes out for some sector of the economy, it's because some company somewhere had enough money to lobby for it and the "regulation" becomes a weapon to snuff out the competition. The earliest signs of this happening was during the "cattle and butcher wars" in chicago during the early 1900's. A few companies payed off the politicians and had them pass "health laws" that successfully destroyed almost the entire industry there(ma and pa stores that sold beef products on corners, cut the stuff in front of you so you knew what you were getting).... Obamacare is another perfect example of this: Big insurance companies dumped millions into lobbying for it. Now that the law has passed, a few hundred of the smaller health insurance companies have already been shuttered, with a couple thousand workers now unemployed....

 

[omnimodis78]

[citation][nom]memadmax[/nom]...Obamacare is another perfect example of this: Big insurance companies dumped millions into lobbying for it. Now that the law has passed, a few hundred of the smaller health insurance companies have already been shuttered, with a couple thousand workers now unemployed....[/citation]
Just so we're clear, I'm from Canada so your country's strategy to get out of it's massive (and embarrassing levels of debt) has little meaning to me, but seriously, this "Obamacare" is still being tossed around down there? You have a president who sees the numbers and knows where those numbers are headed (more national debt) and understands the fundamental contradiction between what should be happening and what is happening (in other words, recognizes the social and economic hypocrisy), and yet you short-term thinking Americans are bashing him for it? Very interesting, though not at all surprising. You should also take a good close look at all the countries that finance some sort of universal health care, guess what, we're not broke, in fact, we're doing rather well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care

 

[mayne92]

[citation][nom]RazorBurn[/nom]If ever Seagate acquires OCZ, and brings its Great Realibility for their SSD.. All my future SSD purchases will go with it..[/citation]
You are kidding right? Seagate is trash.

 

[mayne92]

[citation][nom]omnimodis78[/nom]Just so we're clear, I'm from Canada so your country's strategy to get out of it's massive (and embarrassing levels of debt) has little meaning to me, but seriously, this "Obamacare" is still being tossed around down there? You have a president who sees the numbers and knows where those numbers are headed (more national debt) and understands the fundamental contradiction between what should be happening and what is happening (in other words, recognizes the social and economic hypocrisy), and yet you short-term thinking Americans are bashing him for it? Very interesting, though not at all surprising. You should also take a good close look at all the countries that finance some sort of universal health care, guess what, we're not broke, in fact, we're doing rather well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care[/citation]
You serious? I'm just wondering what Canada has to offer the world besides a failing RIM and AMD? Maybe spend more money on your defense of your Royal Canadian Mounted Police? The US should go the way of other countries who are in such rough shape like Greece? No thanks.

Since you obviously know Obama so well, could you clue us in what his economic policy is right now and what he is thinking? Maybe how he is feeling?

Thanks, but maybe you Canadians should just stick to hockey and your socialized healthcare ( that blows as every Canadian I talk to says that they have to come to the US for quality treatment).

 

[mayne92]

Oh, so OCZ actually use Indilinx silicon this time? The next drive won't be "Barefoot infused"?

I loved it when customers went to the OCZ forums to confront OCZ reps that the Vertex/Agility 4 uses Marvell silicon and they got all pissy saying that we really shouldn't care about what is under the hood just so long as it works great. Nothing like being duped through good marketing.

 

[CaedenV]

[citation][nom]omnimodis78[/nom]Just so we're clear, I'm from Canada so your country's strategy to get out of it's massive (and embarrassing levels of debt) has little meaning to me, but seriously, this "Obamacare" is still being tossed around down there? You have a president who sees the numbers and knows where those numbers are headed (more national debt) and understands the fundamental contradiction between what should be happening and what is happening (in other words, recognizes the social and economic hypocrisy), and yet you short-term thinking Americans are bashing him for it? Very interesting, though not at all surprising. You should also take a good close look at all the countries that finance some sort of universal health care, guess what, we're not broke, in fact, we're doing rather well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care[/citation]
If Obama had an economic policy and we could trust that such a policy would not change in 6mo, then we would not be in half the mess we are in (still a mess though, the Prez doesn't control everything). Businesses rely on accurate predictable fiscal policy in order to make long term decisions, and to head towards long term growth. Having a Gov't where we simply do not know what directions things are headed causes the people with money to hold back (as they should) instead of taking risks in expanding into other fields and venues. I am not saying that 'Bamster-care is good or bad, but the fact that it was so close, and that there was/is no way to know what effect it would have on the economy (because neither side read the bill, and those who read it did not understand it), made it a massive roadblock to progress. Now that it is passed (even though I completely disagree with it) we should leave it be, we need leadership that simply stops stiring the pot, and does the expected, so that we can just do what we do.

Also, it is not Obamacare, Obama did not write it, Obama does not agree with it, and Obama knows absolutely nothing about economics or the healthcare system. Obama pushed for a single-payer system, which he did not get. All he did was see this bill as closer to his ideal than the current system, so he signed it (and did the normal rig-a-ma-roll of pushing the party line, but that is his job, not his opinion). Conservatives are morons for believing that Obama had anything more to do with it than that. Liberals are morons to think that what passed will be any better than what has already been in place.

Every last politician should be thrown in jail for spending such massive amounts of debt on things which have only slowed down the crash (and recovery) instead of making intelligent decisions which could have avoided the problems in the first place. Because frankly this housing crash was seen coming a mile away (granted not the extreme consequences of it), and the next crash that will come when everyone finally retires will be much worse (what happens to the stock market and the companies who are on it when more than 50% of it's investors begin withdrawing to live on their savings rather than putting money into the market?!?), and NOBODY is talking about how to fix that yet.

Vote Caeden Vintori for President,
I don't know what the hell I am doing, but I can't be worse than the people in office now

 

[CaedenV]

@ article
Sweet! I welcome faster SSDs! Current SSDs are fast only in specific situations, but for most uses they do not even saturate SATA II standard yet (running only at 120-160MBps, when SATA II can go up to 200+MBps). But more important than speed will be higher capacities and finally killing off HDD technology. SSDs are the key to useful cloud technologies because it is so much cooler, faster, and more compact (and potentially more reliable) than HDD tech. This allows much lower latency for the ability of information and services to much larger audiences, while drastically lowering the power and cooling costs of data centers.
This will ultimately push internet companies to provide much faster bandwidth, which will lower the cost of 20-40Mbps connections that are currently available (and are frankly fast enough for most of us), and will push the development of 100Gbps and terabit Ethernet on the high end, which will push 10Gbps Ethernet down to the home user level which will let me have my home video-editing server that I am waiting for (because Gigabit, and even duel Gigabit really isn't fast enough... Though 4Gbps would be satisfactory), and frankly HDD technology is not going to push networking tech hard enough to force companies to move up.
If I can get a 10Gbps server in my house I would be happy; If I can fill it with silent 2TB SSDs then I will be in Hog Heaven

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]omnimodis78[/nom]Just so we're clear, I'm from Canada so your country's strategy to get out of it's massive (and embarrassing levels of debt) has little meaning to me, but seriously, this "Obamacare" is still being tossed around down there? You have a president who sees the numbers and knows where those numbers are headed (more national debt) and understands the fundamental contradiction between what should be happening and what is happening (in other words, recognizes the social and economic hypocrisy), and yet you short-term thinking Americans are bashing him for it? Very interesting, though not at all surprising. You should also take a good close look at all the countries that finance some sort of universal health care, guess what, we're not broke, in fact, we're doing rather well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care[/citation]

Obama has made our national debt rise trillions while putting more and more people out of business and into unemployment, where many of them then leech off of the people who are still working, thus exacerbating the situation even more in an exponential, downwards spiral. Do you really think that he and the rest of the USA government are doing what's best for the USA?

Regardless, this is off-topic.

Why doesn't OCZ just make a cut-down and slightly modified version of their Kilimanjaro controller for their next high-performance controller? It shouldn't be more difficult than making a whole new controller or trying to scale an inferior controller upwards. We already know that it works excellently, so I don't see why OCZ doesn't simply make a scaled-down version for SATA 6Gb/s.

 

[slabbo]

[citation][nom]mayne92[/nom]You are kidding right? Seagate is trash.[/citation]

He's right, Seagate is pretty crappy. And it doesn't help that they bought out Maxtor which was the worst of the worst. WD > Seagate.

 

[tului]

I buy Intel now as it is, but if Seagate ever gets their grimy paws on OCZ, they won't even be on the table for consideration.

 

[apache_lives]

[citation][nom]RazorBurn[/nom]If ever Seagate acquires OCZ, and brings its Great Realibility for their SSD.. All my future SSD purchases will go with it..[/citation]

Go look into the Seagate 7200 10 series HDD and there 'bricked' firmware before telling me a seagate hdd is reliable.

 

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]Zingam[/nom]Americans are brainwashed to think that their ways is the only way. And not just brainwashed but turned into consumer animals. They must consume and consume and consume to keep the economy running... But unfortunately they seem to not work enough to pay for what they are consuming.[/citation]Personal debt is high, but not as runaway as the national debt. The government spending is the biggest problem. It's not a matter of "not working enough". It's a matter of spending beyond your means - and the federal government spends far, far beyond their means. Obamacare is a big part of that. It is going to cost us more money, and since they're already spending more than they take in, it means more debt. It also forces you to purchase health care from the government, by force of law.[citation][nom]Zingam[/nom]Well, but a few selected people can make billions of dollars of that.[/citation]You mean like Obama string puller, George Soros?

 

[funguseater]

[citation][nom]thuan[/nom]#Correction:an SSD specific RISC instruction setStill even with that correction what the CEO talked is more about PR than actual technology. There's no SSD specific instruction set. there's only instruction set optimized for SSD.[/citation]

Don't you create the instructions on the chip when you design it? I thought that was the point of risc chips, aren't they like ARM and can be tailor made for use?

Fungi

 

[CaedenV]

He's right, Seagate is pretty crappy. And it doesn't help that they bought out Maxtor which was the worst of the worst. WD > Seagate.

That is what I hear, and yet in the 26+ years I have used computers I have never once had a Seagate fail. Back in the day I never had issues where they did not want to work properly with other brand drives atached to the same cable. I have never had a Seagate 'loose' 45% of the drive for no apparent reason. And yet I have had no end of troubbles with each of these problems every time I have tried a WD drive. Perhaps it is dumb luck, but it is why I use Seagate in my rigs. They are not the fastest, but they simply work, and in the last 11 years I have been buying HDDs (2-3 a year) I have never had a single drive fail from them. I have abandoned many because they were simply too old (5 years is a long time for storage tech), but never did one die on me.

 

[DRosencraft]

[citation][nom]shin0bi272[/nom]in the late 1800's and early 1900's Carnegie's U.S. Steel held 96% of all steel manufacturing in the US (and the US had almost 40% of the worlds steel production). He was able to bring the price of steel down from over 200 dollars a ton to 14. So the fears everyone has of monopolies are not always grounded in reality but progressive politician propaganda.[/citation]

Too bad you didn't finish that class, or hear the end of the story. He didn't drive down the price for the sake of driving down the price. He was trying to keep upstarts from getting into the game, and driving anyone else out there who was in the game. It was about control, so that he could decide how much to sell for and who to sell to. By pricing his competitors out of the market, he could have his company subsume their collateral (their steel mines/rights) and take down bigger companies. Then, as the only game in town, he could set prices as he liked. I respectfully ask that you read up more on Carnegie, Rockefeller, and the others who brought about the anti-monopoly legislation we have now. You are mistaken if you expect that one company in control of a market is going to be good for consumers in the long run.