OCZ IBIS SSD with HSDL interface delivers massive bandwidth

AnandTech received a test sample of OCZ's IBIS SSD, this 3.5" disk uses the company's High Speed Data Link (HSDL) interface that delivers 2 to 4GB/s (yes, that's gigabytes) of aggregate bandwidth to a single SSD!

The first SSD to use HSDL is the OCZ IBIS. As the spiritual successor to the Colossus, the IBIS incorporates four SandForce SF-1200 controllers in a single 3.5” chassis. The four controllers sit behind an internal Silicon Image 3124 RAID controller. This is the same controller used in the RevoDrive which is natively a PCI-X controller, picked to save cost. The 1GB/s of bandwidth you get from the PCI-X controller is routed to a Pericom PCIe x4 switch. The four PCIe lanes stemming from the switch are sent over the HSDL cable to the receiving card on the motherboard. The signal is then grabbed by a chip on the card and passed through to the PCIe bus. Minus the cable, this is basically a RevoDrive inside an aluminum housing. It's a not-very-elegant solution that works, but the real appeal would be controller manufacturers and vendors designing native PCIe-to-HSDL controllers.

You can check out the tests over here. The site measured a maximum sequential write speed of 675MB/s, and once you go RAID with four disks with an optional 4-port HSDL card you should be capable of achieving over 2.5GB/s! Additionally, the 4K random write performance is also quite stunning at 510MB/s.