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Marvell PCI-E SSD claims stunning 2GB/s speed

Published on 1st June 2009 by Richard Swinburne

Marvell's latest SSD claims 2gb/s sustained throughput and 200k IOPs from MLC NAND Flash.

COMPUTEX 2009: Marvell will smash the performance of other SSDs with its latest PCI-Express SSD which claims to run at a huge 2GB/s sustained throughput and can handle 200,000 IOPS from MLC NAND Flash.

The 88SE9480 is a quad channel PCI-Express to S-ATA controller that connects to four 88SS8014 SATA to NAND Flash controllers, which feature wear-leveling technlogy and ECC hardware. The product is clearly aimed at server and workstation class environments, but when we asked Marvell if the 88SS8014 S-ATA to NAND flash would be available as a purchase on its own for 2.5in hard drives the rep explained it was possible but there were no concrete plans.

The current pre-production hardware is separated over two cards right now, with S-ATA connectors linking them together, and we can clearly see the space for four DDR2 SoDIMM memory slots on the upper card for cache, however no specific sizes supported were yet given.

Fancy some Marvell marvel? Let us know your thoughts, in the forums.

Marvell PCI-E SSD claims stunning 2GB/s speed Marvell SSD claims 2GB/s throughput

6 Comments

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Paradigm Shifter 1st June 2009, 12:57

That's very neat. Particularly if the market the controller solo, so you can plug what you want in. 4 DDR2 slots, though... that's potentially a lot of cache! Would need to run it on a UPS to make sure that a power outage wouldn't lose a lot of data.

perplekks45 1st June 2009, 14:04

45 degrees DDR slots? Nice. ;)

2 GB/s? Even better!

Do I need that? Nope. :(

Elton 2nd June 2009, 01:53

Good lord...

If this goes through...

CHEAP SSDs FTW!

Xtrafresh 2nd June 2009, 12:00

lol, one thing this will not be is cheap, if it ever hits the shelves.

It looks pretty dodgy in buildup though. I can spot 6 different PCBs on that picture, although it's not that clear.
It also looks to me that the RAID-controller card that this thing is built around has a capacity for 4 more SATA drives. With good scaling that could amount to 4GB/s, though what anyone would use all that for is a mystery to me.

I think it's unfair to announce these things as a "card" though, as if it's a single product. It's basically an entire storage subsystem with a RAID card and four high-end SSDs attached to it. A self-built array of equal cost will perform pretty similar i think, so i'm not completely over the moon.

Impressive tech-demo though, i hope the technology trickles down into some actually buyable products soon :)

nicae 2nd June 2009, 12:43

I don't see much of a point in something so pre-pre-pre-production grade. Anyway, when people say it's something directed to servers and workstations, I read "expensive". And if it's going to be expensive, why not go for SLC on top of that?

And I couldn't exactly see what's so revolutionary. Is it the SATA to NAND controller? How does FusionIO get their numbers?

Goty 2nd June 2009, 16:48

Just because it's expensive as it is doesn't mean there's call to make it as expensive as possible.