InnoDisk launching 800MB/sec PCI-e SSD

Even though hard drives are currently still more widespread among both consumer-oriented products and enterprise installations, solid state drives are quickly gaining headway and have begun to be implemented in both large systems and personal computers.

Companies have already released various SATA and even PCIe SSDs, the latest being InnoDisk. The Taiwanese company has revealed a new solid state storage line comprised of PCI Express SSDs, called Matador, aimed at the enterprise market.

Normally, drives are limited in their read and write speeds by the actual data transfer capabilities of the interface. PCI Express SSDs, however, leverage the significantly faster PCI Express interface, allowing the Matador to reach read speeds of 800 MB/s and maximum write speeds of 600MB/s. While there is still a significant difference between read and write capabilities, the actual data transfer rates are definitely superior to those of regular units.

The devices aren't much different from OCZ's Z line of products. However, InnoDisk's drives have a larger maximum storage capacity, namely 2TB, while the Z drives have 1TB at most. As such, the company seems to be rather optimistic about its new product and expects to sell about 1 million units during 2010, even though the Z drives have higher read and write speeds (870/780 megabytes per second).

"InnoDisk expressed optimism about the growing demand for future PCIe SSDs targeting enterprise servers, gaming PCs and military computing applications. The company estimated pre-tax profits at NT$5-6 (US$0.15-0.18) per share in 2009, attributing the year's profitability to its high-margin industrial storage solutions," said Digitimes.

The Taiwanese company did not disclose any pricing details but it might very well score quite a few contracts, considering the fact that regular SSDs only reach 230MB/s.